Filmic Frighteners - Ghost Stories (15)

It's funny, isn't it? How it's always the last key that unlocks everything.

The Gist: Ghost Stories stars Andy Nyman as Professor Phillip Goodman, a professional skeptic who debunks supposed manifestations of the supernatural for his TV show 'Psychic Frauds'. His greatest challenge arises when he comes into possession of three files, detailing disturbing paranormal cases as yet unsolved. The files bring him into contact with a guarded nightwatchman (Paul Whitehouse), a deeply troubled teen (Alex Lawther) and an aloof businessman (Martin Freeman). As he investigates each of their bizarre stories, he becomes more unsettled regarding unresolved issues in his own life. Haunting, it transpires, comes in many forms...

The Juice: Adapted by Nyman and director Jeremy Dyson from their own successful stage play, Ghost Stories is an artfully crafted modern take on the British anthology horror film. Nyman is great as the cocksure skeptic steadily having his rationalism challenged and his nerves jangled along with us. The other leads provide sterling support, with special credit due to Lawther's supremely jittery performance as the traumatised teen. Each of the three main segments has a distinctive visual style to match its classic location - and abandoned asylum, dense woodlands, an austere modern mansion - while all three use lighting and eerie soundscapes as much as easy jump scares to build the atmosphere of dread. There's a nice seam of dark humour as well, which dissipates as the story twists its way into a whole other kind of horror experience.

The Judgement: 7.5/10. Always intriguing and frequently ingenious, this is a film that trades in gradual creeping fear, though one section does have a riot with some retro monster-movie shocks.  The direction it takes is divisive - a unarguably clever post-modern diversion that risks undermining what has gone before. That aside it's a Pandora's box of subtly wicked delights and a fine piece of modern Brit horror cinema.

Personal Fear Factor: Chilled at points and rather horrified at the end, though ultimately I preferred the film's old-school 'house of horror' sections.