Last night on Amz Prime, I watched
Ghost Stories, a 2017 British portmanteau film directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. Being fond of the old Amicus portmanteau films, I was sufficiently intrigued to give this a shot.
The lead character Philip Goodman (Andy Nyman himself) is an academic and TV debunker of charlatans and superstitions. He one day gets a summons from his childhood idol Charles Cameron, only to find him an alcoholic recluse, scornful of his own and Goodman's work. Cameron hands Goodman a set of case dossiers and challenges him to find a rational explanation, thus setting the proceedings in motion - A night watchman at a disused asylum building who has a weird encounter, a nervous student who meets a satyr-like creature in the woods, an upmarket trader that finds poltergeist activity in his home. Eventually these lead to a more surreal conclusion where Goodman finds his own sanity slipping.
The basic idea for GS is a tested one, but the film falters in the quality of the script. Too much of the eerie quotient relies on darkness, loud noises and the sudden appearance of spooky figures. It's an effect that when used repeatedly gets tired fast. The concluding surreal bits are nicely done, but the sudden dump of a moral lesson for Goodman (for his past actions / inaction) has a forced quality and the end is nothing as forceful as the makers would like to think it is. The acting is of a good standard, and it's short enough at 90min odd, with snazzy production design and lovingly graded visuals, but it falls short in freshness and entertainment value.