Ghost Stories: How Camp Was My Camp Fire?
I went to see Ghost Stories in the theatre years ago in London. In those days I was unlikely to go to the theatre more than once a year. I saw "The Woman in Black" several times. I saw "Shockheaded Peter", perhaps three or four times: a couple of times with the Tiger Lilies doing the music and once with David Thomas and Two Pale Boys. (That was the name of the band - though there were a lot of goths milling about the foyer). I saw The Hanged Man at the Hammersmith Apollo, where David Bowie had killed Ziggy Stardust, and I saw a production of Frankenstein by the East Dulwich Players that saw me biting chunks out of the back of my hand in appreciation.
There was a thing called "Darker Shores" at the Hampstead Theatre which had Tom Goodman Hill and a magic bath in it...
So seeing Ghost Stories was not an ordinary evening's entertainment. But I enjoyed it. It was a peculiar collision of things: it was part magic show, part portmanteau film. Even the theatrical contrivances were there to expose the rude mechanicals of theatre production: the skeleton constantly pressing against the skin. I enjoyed it - in many ways I was the ideal audience - but it didn't so much fall between two stools as balance uneasily between five of six of them. It left me both satisfied and oddly cheated. I felt like a rube who had been shilled by obvious sleight of hand.
The film makes me feel the same, but more so. I saw it in the cinema and liked it, knowing that I would ultimately buy it and watch it again, seeing things that I hadn't seen the first time around. A lot of people don't like the film - they find it disappointing. And there is a real chutzpah in that ending. You do think "Well,they wouldn't possibly do what I think they're going to do."
But they do do that. Its funny. It's the plot of a child's first ghost story.
I don't really care. Its nicely done. It is, to coin a phrase, well seeded. There is an astonishing level of detail in this beautiful looking film. The glittery nastiness of a touring medium, the sepia-tinted sadness of the seaside static caravan, the bleak majesty of a British beach: the dove-grey softness of the skies and the shabby showbiz twinkle of the seas. This is a very Northern film with a very Northern palette of colours and a Northern sensibility: odd then that only one of the four leads is from the North. Odder still is the almost total absence of women. We are given the idea that his sister Esther's (Amy Doyle) banishment from the family for dating a goyim is the reason that Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman) has devoted his career to puncturing the nonsense of religion and the supernatural. It is a career that appears to have left him lost and alone. He has no family and no close friends. So, a letter from famed ghost-buster from the 70's, Charles Cameron, long believed to be dead, is an absolute gift. At last, a father figure for him to love again.
It doesn't work like that. Cameron is haunted by three unsolved cases, three cases that buckled his certainties. He has seen Goodman's work and thinks he is an arrogant fool. He offers him the chance to open the cases that bested him. Goodman has no choice but to accept.
I won't describe the stories other than to say that the Paul Whitehouse one is the one that people who like horror films tend to like, and the Martin Freeman one is the one that people who don't like Martin Freeman like the least.
(I made the mistake of reading some of the comments on IMDB - never do this. It isn't hateful screeds of violent misogyny like it is on Twitter and Youtube and other places where the bros like to gather. But it is made up of people imagining another film and then being disappointed that the film they are watching isn't that film. It is extraordinary how often you read the thudding prose of an earnest young man bewildered that the film that is unfolding in front of him isn't, bafflingly, exactly like he imagined it would be. Why would they do that? What a betrayal of the ideas in my head. The sense of entitlement in fans these days is quite extraordinary - I have no idea where it comes from.)
The middle story was the one I liked least when I first saw the film. I thought it was a silly and vaguely fashionable foray into folk horror. It is now, by far, my favourite part of the film and that is entirely down to an astonishing performance by Alex Lawther. From the very outset he is funny, terrified, terrifying and smiling, always smiling. He also gets the biggest laughs in the film. He is astonishing.
So, it might be my favourite part of the film but its not the most effective. That is the very real horror of Goodman's primal trauma. The film is suddenly stripped of the trappings of supernatural cinema and we're in a very different terrain: a derelict short-cut home from school, bomber jackets, C 18 graffiti and casual racism: we're in 1981 and the Club 4 Heroes is a very long way away. The young Goodman is bullied by a big skinhead and his snidey little shit mate, until an even better victim comes along, Jake Davies' Kojak: a soft lad with alopecia and a snorkel jacket and a desperate need to belong. What happens next is the key to the entire film, and diligent and watchful cineastes will have noted the various clues along the way: the solution to the entire story is revealed within five minutes of meeting Paul Whitehouse' character, and the identity of Charles Cameron (his face looks like its been wrapped in rubber bands) is also clear when the actor's accent slips like a fat bloke on a frozen pond. That is to say: often and hilariously.
I don't know how much I like this film. I like the idea of it. I like the way it looks, its locations, its colours. The script is sometimes very good and the performances often brilliant. Its a careful, tidy film, as though the film-makers expected to be asked to show their working at a later date. And because I'm roughly the same age as the directors it speaks to me exactly in the places that it draws its power from: bigger boys, bullies, suddenly aggressive cockneys, disappointed parents. The nastiness of an 80s childhood. The horror of being alone as an adult.
But its bitty. And incoherent. Its references are odd - slightly miscuing the things that it seems to want to be referencing. The final reveal reminds me of when I went to see "The Blair Witch Project" at a cinema in Islington and right at the end a cockney voice shouted out from the back of the room"Oh! Is that it?" as the credits rolled.
It sounded like Paul Whitehouse, in fact.
There was a thing called "Darker Shores" at the Hampstead Theatre which had Tom Goodman Hill and a magic bath in it...
So seeing Ghost Stories was not an ordinary evening's entertainment. But I enjoyed it. It was a peculiar collision of things: it was part magic show, part portmanteau film. Even the theatrical contrivances were there to expose the rude mechanicals of theatre production: the skeleton constantly pressing against the skin. I enjoyed it - in many ways I was the ideal audience - but it didn't so much fall between two stools as balance uneasily between five of six of them. It left me both satisfied and oddly cheated. I felt like a rube who had been shilled by obvious sleight of hand.
The film makes me feel the same, but more so. I saw it in the cinema and liked it, knowing that I would ultimately buy it and watch it again, seeing things that I hadn't seen the first time around. A lot of people don't like the film - they find it disappointing. And there is a real chutzpah in that ending. You do think "Well,they wouldn't possibly do what I think they're going to do."
But they do do that. Its funny. It's the plot of a child's first ghost story.
I don't really care. Its nicely done. It is, to coin a phrase, well seeded. There is an astonishing level of detail in this beautiful looking film. The glittery nastiness of a touring medium, the sepia-tinted sadness of the seaside static caravan, the bleak majesty of a British beach: the dove-grey softness of the skies and the shabby showbiz twinkle of the seas. This is a very Northern film with a very Northern palette of colours and a Northern sensibility: odd then that only one of the four leads is from the North. Odder still is the almost total absence of women. We are given the idea that his sister Esther's (Amy Doyle) banishment from the family for dating a goyim is the reason that Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman) has devoted his career to puncturing the nonsense of religion and the supernatural. It is a career that appears to have left him lost and alone. He has no family and no close friends. So, a letter from famed ghost-buster from the 70's, Charles Cameron, long believed to be dead, is an absolute gift. At last, a father figure for him to love again.
It doesn't work like that. Cameron is haunted by three unsolved cases, three cases that buckled his certainties. He has seen Goodman's work and thinks he is an arrogant fool. He offers him the chance to open the cases that bested him. Goodman has no choice but to accept.
I won't describe the stories other than to say that the Paul Whitehouse one is the one that people who like horror films tend to like, and the Martin Freeman one is the one that people who don't like Martin Freeman like the least.
(I made the mistake of reading some of the comments on IMDB - never do this. It isn't hateful screeds of violent misogyny like it is on Twitter and Youtube and other places where the bros like to gather. But it is made up of people imagining another film and then being disappointed that the film they are watching isn't that film. It is extraordinary how often you read the thudding prose of an earnest young man bewildered that the film that is unfolding in front of him isn't, bafflingly, exactly like he imagined it would be. Why would they do that? What a betrayal of the ideas in my head. The sense of entitlement in fans these days is quite extraordinary - I have no idea where it comes from.)
The middle story was the one I liked least when I first saw the film. I thought it was a silly and vaguely fashionable foray into folk horror. It is now, by far, my favourite part of the film and that is entirely down to an astonishing performance by Alex Lawther. From the very outset he is funny, terrified, terrifying and smiling, always smiling. He also gets the biggest laughs in the film. He is astonishing.
So, it might be my favourite part of the film but its not the most effective. That is the very real horror of Goodman's primal trauma. The film is suddenly stripped of the trappings of supernatural cinema and we're in a very different terrain: a derelict short-cut home from school, bomber jackets, C 18 graffiti and casual racism: we're in 1981 and the Club 4 Heroes is a very long way away. The young Goodman is bullied by a big skinhead and his snidey little shit mate, until an even better victim comes along, Jake Davies' Kojak: a soft lad with alopecia and a snorkel jacket and a desperate need to belong. What happens next is the key to the entire film, and diligent and watchful cineastes will have noted the various clues along the way: the solution to the entire story is revealed within five minutes of meeting Paul Whitehouse' character, and the identity of Charles Cameron (his face looks like its been wrapped in rubber bands) is also clear when the actor's accent slips like a fat bloke on a frozen pond. That is to say: often and hilariously.
I don't know how much I like this film. I like the idea of it. I like the way it looks, its locations, its colours. The script is sometimes very good and the performances often brilliant. Its a careful, tidy film, as though the film-makers expected to be asked to show their working at a later date. And because I'm roughly the same age as the directors it speaks to me exactly in the places that it draws its power from: bigger boys, bullies, suddenly aggressive cockneys, disappointed parents. The nastiness of an 80s childhood. The horror of being alone as an adult.
But its bitty. And incoherent. Its references are odd - slightly miscuing the things that it seems to want to be referencing. The final reveal reminds me of when I went to see "The Blair Witch Project" at a cinema in Islington and right at the end a cockney voice shouted out from the back of the room"Oh! Is that it?" as the credits rolled.
It sounded like Paul Whitehouse, in fact.
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