We assumed that Ghost Stories (2018) was just a random horror movie, but it turned out to be a little something more. The previews of coming attractions were all for IFC arthouse horror. That raised expectations a little.
It stars Andy Nyman as a kind of shlubby psychic debunker. In flashbacks, we see that his father was a conservative Jew whose rigid ideas destroyed the family. That gives Nyman his impetus for his debunking TV show. He also considers champion debunker Leonard Byrne to be an inspiration. Byrne disappeared years ago, but Nyman gets an invitation from him.
When he visits, he finds an old man living in a trailer. Byrne tells Nyman that his show is shit, and that he can't explain all psychic phenomena. He gives Nyman three dossiers of cases and challenges him to explain them.
The first is a hard-drinking night-watchman Paul Whitehouse. When guarding a decommissioned insane asylum for little girls, he is haunted by a girl in a yellow dress. He is also cranky, having lost his wife to cancer and has a daughter in hospital with locked-in syndrome.
The second is Alex Lawther, a twitchy goth kid who does everything wrong, and is constantly arguing with his strict parents. One night, driving without a license, because he was afraid to tell his parents that he failed the driving tests, he runs over the Devil - or at least some pink goat-person.
Finally, he meets with Martin Freedman, a rich snob who takes him shooting on the moors. He was troubled by a poltergeist when his wife was pregnant. She died delivering a monster of some sort, who is still alive, poor thing. Freedman then puts his shotgun under his head a pulls the trigger.
The first two stories are told in more-or-less full flashback style, but this isn't really one of those anthology horrors. The frame story about Nyman is too prominent. Also, there are odd repeating themes, and spooky apparitions only Nyman sees. He sees himself inside his car, screaming in terror and trying to get out. The girl in the yellow dress returns as a doll. Freedman shines a flashlight in his eyes like a doctor checking the dilation reflex. There's something to do with a string of numbers. And so on.
Not to spoil it, but in the end, several layers of reality are peeled back. We get one final horror story, this one without anything supernatural, from Nyman's childhood. And finally, the horror story of the frame is revealed.
I guessed that it had something to do with Judaism, because Nyman is Jewish, the Goth kid is Jewish (his father tells him he can't schmooze out of it this time), and Freedman is casually nasty about "you people". But I was wrong.
In the end, although there were some arty shots, and the twists were interesting, this did turn out to be a pretty standard horror movie. Ms. Spenser liked it OK, maybe more than me, but neither of us was blown away. Maybe it was too cluttered, maybe not scary enough. Well, that last part was pretty scary, and maybe too real.
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