Netflix And Chill: Ghost Stories (2020)

It's easy to stay within your comfort zone when it comes to watching movies and TV shows. You now have more choices than ever before, and many of them will be pushed in front of you by an algorithm that knows what you've already seen, and hopefully already enjoyed. I am not averse to filling my viewing schedule out with easy picks, something featuring a favourite star or a preferred sub-genre, but I do sometimes try to make time for something that is far from my usual fare. That's why I decided to set aside 144 minutes to watch Ghost Stories, an Indian anthology horror film made up of four tales that may very well include some specific cultural references that passed me by.

Directed by Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, and Anurag Kashyap, with the first three also writing their instalments, and Isha Luthra and Avinash Sampath adding a good amount of input to the screenplay, what you have here are, for the most part, familiar tales slightly freshened up by the setting and language.

First up is the story of a young nurse, Sameera (Janhvi Kapoor), helping a bedridden old woman (Surekha Sikri) who keeps insisting that her son is in the room next door. The room is empty, of course, but something isn't right about the situation. Then it's the tale of Neha (Sobhita Dhulipala), a pregnant woman who starts to have horrifying visions while babysitting her nephew (Zachary Braz). Next up we have someone (Sukant Goel) visiting a desolate and dangerous small town. Some children explain the situation to him, most people have been eaten and the only way to stay alive is to convince the flesh-eaters that you are one of them. Last, but by no means least, is the story of Ira (Mrunal Thakur), a woman who enters into an arranged marriage with Dhruv (Avinash Tiwary). Dhruv was besotted with his grandmother, and still continues to talk with her and play "peek-a-boo" most days, despite the fact that she died some time ago.

Despite the details and points I may have missed, at least two of the main stories here feel like very obvious metaphors for aspects of society. We're all aware of the pressures put upon young women to become mothers, which runs through the second tale, and as for the third episode, any story that has a community devastated by flesh-eaters who will only let others survive if they see them engaging in the same behaviour is analogous to pretty much any fluctuating social group you can think of. 

The cast all do great work, with particular praise fur to Kapoor and Goel, both allowed to be bombarded with strangeness, to say the least, as things get creepier and creepier for them. Dhulipala has to contend with a wide variety of impressive special effects, some of them obscuring her central performance, and Thakur is slightly undermined by the fact that everything unfolding around her is so unsubtle and obvious.

The writing and direction are good enough, although it seems inevitable that I could suggest trimming some of the runtime to make this a leaner and scarier experience. While not up there with the best horror anthology movies, Ghost Stories is a good time for those who have already seen all of the more well-known titles. I wouldn't say that any one chapter here is particularly weak, and that's always a pleasant surprise in any anthology movie. I also wouldn't say that any one chapter here is particularly unforgettable either though. 

7/10

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Ghost Stories (2017)

Ghost Stories is a live stage experience, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, that I am saddened to have never experienced. It was supposed to be quite terrifying, and I do enjoy being scared witless. Thankfully, although I have no idea how closely this adaptation sticks to the source material, I now have this film version to help contribute to my underwear laundry bill.

Having heard Nyman discuss the long road from stage to screen for this project, it seemed clear to me that the story was one full of classic horror movie genre tropes that everyone knew couldn't just be transferred back from the stage. What was intense and terrifying in a live production would just feel hokey and cliched when placed onscreen. Thankfully, that didn't stop them working hard until we ended up with this, a film that feels both very traditional and yet also, somehow, fresh and lively.

Nyman stars as Professor Goodman, a debunker of supernatural phenomena who is asked to investigate three cases that are believed to offer absolute proof of another world around us. Those three cases involve Paul Whitehouse as a night watchman encountering spookiness in an abandoned building, Alex Lawther as a teenager who regrets the choice of route on his late-night drive home, and Martin Freeman as a businessman who claims to have felt an evil presence in his own home while his pregnant partner was hospitalised.

Yes, essentially a portmanteau film (once the prime stomping ground of Amicus back in the heyday of British horror cinema), Ghost Stories manages to break the problems often associated with those films - a weak link here and there, pacing issues, building and sustaining tension - by weaving details, some subtle and some more obvious, throughout each tale, as well as the material bookending the film.

I always tell people, if I am forced to choose, that my favourite type of horror movie is a zombie movie. Put a zombie in it and I will watch it. Which means I have watched a LOT of awful zombie movies. But the only type of horror movie to really affect me is a good ghost film, and Ghost Stories is certainly a good ghost film. After a fairly light start to the proceedings, the atmosphere starts to build, and the frights start happening, in a way that reminded me of that classic horror story all about the house where nobody had ever survived the night. You know the one? It's a creepy little tale that builds to something quite intense, and this is the cinematic equivalent of that, although there are a multitude of other influences and nods, from The Turn Of The Screw to The Signal-Man.

But for anyone wondering if this would be TOO literary or stagey, or sedate, fear not. There are plenty of jump scares, some very sudden and some coming along as the required pay off to sequences of sustained tension unlike any I can think of in modern horror cinema. There are also some images that will, to use the technical term, freak you the fuck out. And the dread, don't forget the dread. It's the atmosphere of dread that makes the film almost unbearable at times though, seeping through almost every frame once things get going and never letting viewers relax, despite the very occasional moments of humour that provide a fleeting respite.

The writing and direction from Dyson and Nyman is fantastic, which you would expect from the two men who would surely have been so close to this material for many years already, but the performers also deserve praise. Nyman has always been a great presence onscreen, and turns in yet another great performance, but Whitehouse gives the kind of everyman performance necessary to drag viewers swiftly into the first fully-fledged segment of terror, young Lawther adds another great turn to his impressive roster of credits, and Freeman manages to twist his usual perceived happy-go-lucky demeanour into something, well, rather different.

A brilliant, heady brew of the classic and the modern, Ghost Stories is to be applauded for the way it gives fans what they want, even if they didn't realise what they wanted. It's smart, it's steeped in the history of the genre, it's bloody audacious at times (in ways that some might balk at), it freely mixes stylistic touches in whatever way best serves the narrative, it keeps drawing together the main connective tissue on the way to "the grand finale", and it's one of the scariest films I have watched in years.

Highly recommended, and I'll be very impressed if we see a better horror movie this year.

9/10

Ghost Stories is probably a while away from shiny disc form, but keep your eyes peeled for it when it gets a wider release (in cinemas and then in stores).