Ghost Stories
⋆½ out of four stars
Unrated by the MPAA.
Theater: Lagoon.
This throwback to nerve-jangling British horror anthologies quickly becomes a tiresome gutter ball of a chiller. It offers us three flashback stories of poltergeists, woodland demons and little girl ghouls, told without logical links or narrative resolution. In creating a subtext about the dangerous ways in which we deal with warped perceptions, writer/director/star Andy Nayman withholds the full context of what we have viewed until the final big reveal. That doesn't redeem the clumsily structured film, but partly excuses it.
Nyman, adapting the film from his play, is Prof. Philip Goodman, a skeptic about supernatural matters who exposes phony psychics on his minor TV show. His long-vanished idol, who set the bar for shaming supernatural frauds, gives Goodman files about three unsolved cases. They may unearth actual evidence of occult evils, he warns: "Things are not always as they seem."
Goodman, who believes that everything has a simple answer, re-examines the mysteries one by one. This divides the film into chapters with a differing focus but a sadly consistent level of amateurism.
The first segment is the worst. A retired night watchman (Paul Whitehouse, a fixture of 1990s English TV comedy) spins Goodman a story about a girlish ghost he encountered while guarding an abandoned former asylum. This segment involves a lot of sprinting between darkened rooms with no light other than a shaky flashlight beam, and repetitious jump scares.
Next, there's the excellent up-and-comer Alex Lawther, a creepy yet funny show stealer you may remember from "The Imitation Game." He plays a devil-obsessed teen whose late-night joy ride in his father's car ends in a collision with a boogeyman. Lawther, who excels at making anxiety both pitiful and funny, makes his spine quake visibly.
