I ended up going to Mid-Valley Libe to look for movies. Like West Valley, Mid-Val is also open on Sundays and I hoped I might have a better chance there for some new finds, as I'd already scoured the racks at West Val several weeks running. They had a boatload of movies at Mid-Val, unfortunately not too many of 'em were horror. I did find one that looked promising, however, a recent film called "Ghost Stories" (2017), which I watched tonight. "Ghost Stories" is an independent production from England, distributed by IFC, which I believe is a cable TV channel. That is normally not a selling point for me, and I also avoid anything under the Sundance umbrella or any other film with connections to Indie Festivalia (a word I just coined). It's not that I wouldn't support independent films. Indeed when the movement began in the late 1970s, my friends and I were on the lookout for new and exciting filmmakers in the same way we sought out new bands. The great David Lynch was discovered and then nurtured by programs associated with independent filmmaking, AFI specifically.
The only problem was that film schools were later over-enrolled to a saturation point, and every Tom, Dick and Harry with a script or a Super-8 film to his credit assumed he was an auteur. It was the usual story. To paraphrase Jimmy Durante, "everybody wanted to get in on the act", but only a very few had the talent and skills to make a go of producing quality motion pictures. Therefore, for film fans like myself, the notion of Sundance and other film fests became anethema, things to be avoided or ignored entirely. As the years passed, I lost interest in new independent films, simply because they had become a dime a dozen by the late 1990s, and 99% of them were not of lasting quality.
Remember the lesson of Golden Era Hollywood : You have to tell a captivating story.
I say all of this as a prelude to what will be only a brief review of "Ghost Stories", a movie I really wanted to like, but wavered back and forth on throughout it's duration. Here's the setup : The lead character, a Professor Goodman, is a debunker of phony psychics and anything else paranormal. He has a TV show that exposes it all as a fraud, or superstition. Goodman's hero was another professor who predated him, who also used logic and science to discredit occult mythology.
But the thing is, that Goodman is only pretending to be a Professor. That's just his TV title, and the real professor whom he holds in high esteem has now contacted him and has asked for a meeting at his mobile home, near an isolated beach.
Goodman drives there, knocks on the door of the trailer, and is invited in to the professor's dingy abode, where he finds himself presented with a challenge. It seems that the professor had three cases in his career that he was not able to dismiss. They remain unexplained, and have caused him obvious grief. As Goodman meets with the man, he is hooked up to an IV drip, pictured in shadow and likely on his last legs. What could have caused such a brilliant and rational academic to come apart in this unforeseen way?
Could it have been an actual ghost? A real one?
That is the reason the professor has called Goodman to his home. "I need you to investigate these three cases and report back to me. I fear that all my work has been in vain. Come back when you are finished and tell me that there is nothing to these incidents that cannot be explained rationally. Ahh, but I think you'll not be able to explain them. You see, Mr. Goodman, it is not the superstitious who are wrong, but you and I! It is our work that has been fraudulent! Explain to me these cases if you can - and explain them to yourself as well".
Goodman politely scoffs, but accepts the challenge, then leaves the professor's trailer a bit miffed and disappointed. He'd expected a meeting with his hero, a robust and worthy skeptic, but instead had encountered a worn-out, weary man of self-doubt.
Goodman vows right then and there to expose the final three cases on the professor's agenda, the supposedly Unexplainable Ones. What follows is a horror anthology that in format is similar to films like "Tales of Terror" or "The House That Dripped Blood". British studios such as Hammer and Amicus were particularly good at such productions, and perhaps filmmaker Andy Nyman (who also stars as Professor Goodman) wanted to honor that tradition of English horror by creating a film in the anthology style. The problem is that he doesn't have a well-developed script. He's got most of everything else : excellent atmosphere, truly spooky camerawork, good locations for his haunts. His actors are perfect for their roles and his premise is an interesting one - what if the Supernatural isn't real after all, and can be entirely and rationally explained?
I was all over the map as I watched this movie. I wavered back and forth between enthusiasm and disappointment again and again, at first thinking "wow, this is gonna be really great"! as the premise gathered steam, and then feeling deflated after the first Ghost Story, which was built up well at first and had me prepared for a terrifying (or logically explained) conclusion, but then it just kind of....ended, like it was walking off a cliff. Or more likely, as if Nyman couldn't think of a better ending. The same was true of the second Ghost Story, and it was a shame because that one featured a young actor who really played his role to the hilt, as a neurotic young man whose car has broken down in the woods. This story had the potential to be enormously frightening, but again, the development just wasn't there. It's not enough just to write your script. You've gotta go over it many times in order to build it up, to give it dimension, to really flesh it out as far as you can. And the trouble with many of today's films is that the writers don't seem to be willing, or able, to do this.
Nyman has a lot going for his movie, including an ending that I'll say nothing about, except to reveal that, from what I read on IMDB, viewers either loved or hated it. I myself thought it was pretty creative, and at that point I was wavering back toward enthusiasm for my review. But in the end, after it was over and I had time to let the film settle in, I found that it didn't really stick with me for very long. Most of this was due to the lack of a proper story for any of the three Unsolvable Cases.
I am gonna go right down the middle with "Ghost Stories". I am only gonna give it one and one half thumbs up, but I am also gonna recommend you see it if you are a horror fanatic (but only if you are a fanatic). If you are just a casual fan, you'll surely be disappointed, however if you live and breathe horror movies, as I do, you might find something to like, and you might like it even better than I did. I noticed that most of the fan reviews were all-or-nothing. Most either loved or hated it. I thought it was really good in some ways, and but overall insubstantial. Nyman should try again with better writing. ///
That's all for now. Let's hope these awful winds will stop soon so the firefighters can get a handle on things in the Sepulveda Pass, and even more so in Northern California. No more wind! Besides being my most hated weather condition, they also create havoc and are very dangerous. So may they die down asap. I am gonna head out now to the store, for avocados and chips. I will see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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