[rating=7.00]
While it’s presented as a horror anthology — which it technically is — Ghost Stories is much more a carefree romp that’s not quite horror. But it is a pretty good popcorn movie that delivers scares, even if they don’t quite stay with you.
Starring Andy Nyman as Professor Goodman, (who also serves as co-writer and co-director with Jeremy Dyson), a famous skeptic who makes his living publicly calling out psychics and discrediting any haunting mumbo-jumbo. The film starts when Goodman finds himself summoned by his personal hero, a television personality who forged his own career in the 1970s by similarly debunking tales of poltergeists and hauntings. He tells Goodman there are three cases he was unable to debunk, entrusting them to him as a way to convince him that ghosts are, in fact, real.
From there, Goodman visits these three cases, setting up the loose anthology structure. The first, a nightwatchman (Paul Whitehouse), who experiences an unnerving vision during his shift one night. The second, a nerve-wracked teen (Alex Lawther), consumed with visions of a demon after an unexplainable encounter one night in the woods. Finally, a wealthy businessman (Martin Freeman), who tells a story of him witnessing a poltergeist haunting at his mansion.
On the surface, these all play out like by-the-numbers ghost stories (much like the title suggests), but the real fun is piecing together the clues as they start to present themselves over the course of the film. The name of a pub, pictures on a wall, and a sign hanging inside a gun cabinet, all point to the film’s larger story which involves something in Goodman’s own past.
Based on the mega-popular stage play by Nyman and Dyson, the film plays out more like a supernatural-tinged detective story that makes you feel more like one of the teens riding around with Scooby-Do in the Mystery Machine as you try to figure out exactly how this mystery all fits together. There’s even a revealing (yet not altogether surprising) pull-off-the-mask moment, though no line about “meddling kids.” But I digress.
That’s not to say there aren’t a few good-natured jump scares scattered throughout the archetypical stories of ghosts and goblins, but the film has a vibe that’s much closer to a VHS tape you’d watch at a slumber party than a straight-up horror movie. Still, it’s an enjoyable enough movie that relies heavily on overused horror tropes, but does so in its own meta, wink-at-the-audience way that it never tries too hard to be actually scary.
