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(Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman's) Ghost Stories

Started by Blue Jam, March 28, 2018, 06:43:48 PM

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Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Glebe on April 13, 2018, 01:57:16 PM
the ending felt a little bit glib.

I thought the final conclusion regarding the subject matter was very clever though.

DukeDeMondo

I went to see this last night and there were but two other people in the room. Apparently similar sorts of scenes have been reported all week. I really hope that isn't indicative of how it's doing across the country, for it really does deserve much, much better.

I absolutely loved it. I've never seen the play, so I dunno how it compares, but I thought the film was fucking masterful. A couple of the jump-scares didn't really land for me, and none of the stories have very much meat on them, but it was expertly crafted, far as I'm concerned. I dunno how well it might reward repeat viewings, but first time around, knowing fuck all about any of the cases or where they were headed, I found it incredibly tense and unsettling, and properly fucking exhilirating for the duration.

Brundle-Fly

This isn't really a portmanteau film. Almost. If you go in expecting an Amicus style anthology movie with twists or EC comic gruesome conclusions I think you would feel a bit shortchanged. You have to take the film as one story with flashbacks.

The horror film Southbound (2015) is very much in this vein and I was completely wrongfooted by its framing device.

In fact, not a million miles from its nearly namesake, Ghost Story (1980) either.

Glebe

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 13, 2018, 04:17:06 PMI thought the final conclusion regarding the subject matter was very clever though.

Well, to be fair, I thought it was a decent ending, maybe calling it 'glib' is a bit much... I sound like Paul Whitehouses' easily-swayed Fast Show character now, don't I?

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on April 08, 2018, 04:50:10 PMThe Paul Whitehouse section was good until the jump scares started.

I thought the jumps worked pretty well, actually. And I enjoyed all the little is-something-there touches, shadows and everyday objects and that... the little light mote from his lamp that looks like it could be somebody outside. It was effectively creepy and unsettling in a way I think a lot of modern horror films aren't... felt more grounded in the real.

There were a couple of moments that were a little silly, the way the goat thing shouted "Stay!" for instance... and actually that sequence pays homage to The Evil Dead a little too obviously for me.

Quote from: Mark Steels Stockbroker on April 12, 2018, 11:20:47 PM1. The pub he meets Paul Whitehouse in is called "The Tenth Number".

Yep, spotted that.

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 13, 2018, 10:30:53 AMHow many here waited to the bitter end of the film credits expecting the coda of the play version as an easter egg?

If you didn't, don't worry, there isn't one.

I've not seen the play, but I did stay through the credits.

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on April 13, 2018, 05:34:37 PMI went to see this last night and there were but two other people in the room.

One more than at my screening!

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: Glebe on April 13, 2018, 06:02:58 PM
There were a couple of moments that were a little silly, the way the goat thing shouted "Stay!" for instance... and actually that sequence pays homage to The Evil Dead a little too obviously for me.

Yes, I thought so too. The second story was doing ok up to the boy's account of running over Goatboy and having his head felt by a tree. I liked his parents just standing in front of a sink with the tap running. In fact, apart from finding the jump scares a bit trashy, I liked most of the film up to that point.

magval

Anyone else think the thing Paul Whitehouse saw that turned out to be a mop in the corner was the creepiest thing in the film/they've ever seen?

Also found Freeman's 'thing in the corner' especially unsettling until the jump scare.


DukeDeMondo

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 13, 2018, 06:00:01 PM
This isn't really a portmanteau film. Almost. If you go in expecting an Amicus style anthology movie with twists or EC comic gruesome conclusions I think you would feel a bit shortchanged. You have to take the film as one story with flashbacks.

Yeah, that's true. I did go in expecting an Amicus style anthology, but I wasn't disappointed when I realised that wasn't what I was going to get. It reminded me some of the first couple Ju-On films, actually. A series of extremely tense spooky vignettes loosely connected in one way or another.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: magval on April 13, 2018, 07:12:10 PM
Anyone else think the thing Paul Whitehouse saw that turned out to be a mop in the corner was the creepiest thing in the film/they've ever seen?

Yeah that was great. Mainly because of how there was no loud noises or jump cuts, just this weird, horrible, almost funny thing just staring at him. Imagine if you saw that fucking hell.

Glebe

Yeah, that mop woman bobbing around in the torch light was well creepy.

Brundle-Fly

And the blurred top of the passenger seat next to the quaking lad.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Turns out there have been several films called Ghost Story. The 1980 one had some Hollywood greats in it, whereas this 1974 British effort had the guy who inspired Withnail:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Story-DVD-Penelope-Keith/dp/B002OM63MG/ref=sr_1_8?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1523651012&sr=1-8&keywords=ghost+story


Mark Steels Stockbroker

Why did his cassette player have ESCHER scrawled on it? Is that the clue that his mind is trapped in a looped world?

Mark Steels Stockbroker

The trouble that all 3 stories left me with was "and how did he get out of that?"

Chronology is fishy all along, a big clue that something's not right.

falafel

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 13, 2018, 10:30:53 AM
How many here waited to the bitter end of the film credits expecting the coda of the play version as an easter egg?

If you didn't, don't worry, there isn't one.

Oh, that's a shame. That's the thing I remember most. The second pencil roll.

Chilling.

Glebe

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 13, 2018, 08:52:57 PMAnd the blurred top of the passenger seat next to the quaking lad.

Yeah, I was waiting for that to be thing suddenly turning its head toward him.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: Mark Steels Stockbroker on April 13, 2018, 09:37:36 PM
The trouble that all 3 stories left me with was "and how did he get out of that?"

Chronology is fishy all along, a big clue that something's not right.

Yes, which is solved (cynically) by saying: well none of it was real!

But for me the power of much of the Whitehouse section was how you could imagine yourself in a similar position. The later sections just didn't have that vibe, partly because by then they'd given up on realism, no doubt because they knew they could wave anything rubbish away as a hallucination.

Glebe


Brundle-Fly

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on April 14, 2018, 02:34:33 AM
Yes, which is solved (cynically) by saying: well none of it was real!

But for me the power of much of the Whitehouse section was how you could imagine yourself in a similar position. The later sections just didn't have that vibe, partly because by then they'd given up on realism, no doubt because they knew they could wave anything rubbish away as a hallucination.

Spoilers!! and Bollocks. It was just a different way of storytelling,

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 14, 2018, 02:48:53 AM
Spoilers!! and Bollocks. It was just a different way of storytelling,

Apologies for Friday post pub night tetchiness.

magval

Quote from: falafel on April 13, 2018, 11:44:44 PM
Oh, that's a shame. That's the thing I remember most. The second pencil roll.

Chilling.

So what was this then? Doubt I'll ever get to see the play.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: magval on April 14, 2018, 11:00:41 PM
So what was this then? Doubt I'll ever get to see the play.

SPOILER





The play begins as a seminar. Andy Nyman takes the stage to deliver his lecture but his pen rolls off the lectern about thirty seconds into the opening of the show. It looks like a genuine mistake, Nyman almost drops out of character and retrieves the pen. It was an inconsequential moment.

Like the film, at the very end of the production we realise it has all been a comatose night terror and the curtain comes down. Only for it to rise again to the beginning of the show where Nyman takes the stage yet again and once more the pen rolls off the lectern.

Loud scream. Blackout.

This implies the whole nightmare is about to start again a'la Ealing Studios Dead Of Night (1945)


Well, that was my take on it.

BritishHobo

So I loved it. Brilliant, creepy, funny, very beautiful. But I felt quite disappointed by the ending. Maybe it's a problem with me, spending so much time on the internet I've seen the it's all the imaginings of a comatose protagonist theory attached to everything from Harry Potter to Rugrats. But generally I was loving the supernatural/skeptic set-up, the awful sense of something genuinely otherworldly and unexplainable, that the ending felt like a pivot to a totally film.

Fuckin hell it was a joy of a ride though.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

I suppose we have St Elsewhere to blame for the it-was-all-a-self-contained-dream world.

Speaking of which: I was seriously ill ten years ago. There was a bit early on when I collapsed in the hospital corridor and thought I was dying, which no one referred to again.

It had occurred to me that if my life is a film I was watching, I would posit that as the break point when I really died and went to purgatory. What I wonder about is the status of "new" people I met since then. Are they "borrowed" from the real world somehow? What do you reckon?

neveragain


SteveDave

I've just read the wikipedia entry for this and saved myself 2 hours and £30.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: SteveDave on April 17, 2018, 10:03:16 AM
I've just read the wikipedia entry for this and saved myself 2 hours and £30.

You could look up Indian cuisine on Wiki as well and thrown in a free ruby after the film.

Custard

Just saw this at pictures, in a double whammy (sort of) with A Quiet Place

Loved it, and found it really funny in places. Though it was only me and a couple in the audience, and it was just me laughing. The "fingering yourself to John Travolta" line at the start had me hooting.

Lovely cinematography, it looked gorgeous. Solid cast, and everyone seemed to be having fun with it.

Was a bit disappointed in the ending, it fell a bit flat for me, but that's a small gripe really as the rest was so good. The time absolutely flew by

Saw two decent new horrors today. Madness!

I was really disappointed I'm sorry to say...made well, some great acting particularly from the young lad from Black Mirror...that bit where he's being interviewed in the bedroom maybe being my favourite part. But it was all just a whole lot of nothing really.

Every story had absolutely no substance whatsoever, making them not really stories at all...All 3 were basically 'man walks around, sees scary things, scary monster/ghost approaches man'. Martin freemans part was particularly weak, he literally just walks into a room and sees a ghost. That's it.

The ending by today's standards is actually pretty cliched: can't remember how to spoiler so I won't say too much, but just a bit of a cop out it was all a dream type of affair.

So yeah, some great acting from some choice favourites felt a bit wasted on stories such as 'I was a night watchman and I saw a ghost' non-narratives. Style over substance is possible but not in this case for me.

Only learnt it was a play when googling it afterwards and that makes total sense...I can imagine it being a really fucking amazing experience onstage...and the fact there's no story whatsoever would work in that environment I'd imagine.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Misspent Boners on April 23, 2018, 09:50:07 PM
I was really disappointed I'm sorry to say...made well, some great acting particularly from the young lad from Black Mirror...that bit where he's being interviewed in the bedroom maybe being my favourite part. But it was all just a whole lot of nothing really.

Every story had absolutely no substance whatsoever, making them not really stories at all...All 3 were basically 'man walks around, sees scary things, scary monster/ghost approaches man'. Martin freemans part was particularly weak, he literally just walks into a room and sees a ghost. That's it.


I still don't believe they were meant to be taken as self contained vignettes. Most ghost stories involve ' a person walking around seeing a scary ghost'. If anything I'd say Freeman's 'story' was the strongest because not only did it involve the aspect of his wife, it was what happened to his son afterwards for the next 'story' or  pre finale revelation scene.

I think the Dead of Night comparison you made is the most fitting and it was a definite influence on Ghost Stories. There like here the individual segments are generally weaker but the through story is the strongest and creepiest, they all feed off Nyman's story. I think this was much closer to that than the Amicus model of anthology films where the through story is weaker and the segments more memorable.