Ghost Stories

The multi-story anthology has a pedigree – in the horror genre, “Dead of Night”, “Trilogy of Terror” and “Creepshow” stand out particularly as compilations of short stories with startling twists and turns, some more or less held together by a linking device. This film by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson (Dyson being the writing partner of the League of Gentlemen, Nyman being an occasional actor, along with co-writer and co-director of a number of illusionist Derren Brown’s shows), combines a trio of stories being told to Nyman (playing a skeptical investigator of the paranormal) – though of course it turns out he has more at stake in these stories than we initially know. Unfortunately most anthologies suffer from uneven-ness, and this is no exception. The first story, starring Paul Whitehouse as a night watchmen exposed to startling phenomena, probably works best – the second feels like it wraps up too quickly, and the third really never gets off the ground. And the wraparound, when it reveals its secrets, feels tricksy for the sake of being tricksy. There’s a couple of interesting moments of style (in the shooting style, this sometimes feels a bit like a Ken Loach horror movie – very entrenched in the working class in the north of England, with worn and weary houses and emotional malaise), but this never really got me particularly engrossed.