Theatre review: Ghost Stories

ghost stories show review

Performing Arts

The figure of Matt Heyward. Photo by Charles Alexander.

Billed as not suitable for anyone under 15, this Australian realisation of a West End show that first made an appearance in 2010, is a fun, provocative and at times genuinely scary experience that does its best to present phantasmagorical events within the confines and limitations of a theatre.

Ghost Stories  starts off innocently enough with a series of slides that includes numbers (these are replicated within the walls of the Athenaeum itself) whose import will only be explained at the end of the show.

Steve Rodgers is at the lectern playing the avuncular Professor Goodman, a researcher into all manner of extraordinary happenings that can’t be explain by the usual laws of science and reasoning. He gives us a potted history of ghost tales through the ages, the quackery and fakes, the desire for humans to play with, and delight in, curiosities that don’t have easy explanations and our willingness to suspend disbelief.

After portentously setting the scene, Goodman introduces his case studies, three ‘percipients’ who have each encountered the paranormal. One by one, the bewildered men (played with gusto by Jay Laga’aia, Dary Brown, Nick Simpson-Deeks) relate their stories to the curious albeit skeptical Goodman.

Laga’aia’s character is a matter-of-fact nightwatchman doing his rounds. Brown is a nervy student on his drive home from a party. Simpson-Deeks is a pompous businessman waiting for the birth of his first child. All have little in common, except that each has borne witness to some kind of supernatural spectre. This is where all the tropes of horror and ghost stories come together: a lone spotlight wavering uncertainly in the dark; poltergeist mischief; shadows and mist; things that go bump in the night and eerie music. All combine to make the audience titter nervously, scream or jolt in their seats.

The tension builds slowly, crescendoing to a jump scare in each of the three tales. Kudos to the production team for their attention to detail: the set, sound and lighting design are brilliantly conceived. With no interval, it’s a tightly narrated piece of theatre that titillates and shocks.

Read: Exhibition review: Bolder

There is a twist at the end, which offers another way of looking at what we’ve been presented with earlier and promises an even more troubling possibility involving Goodman, but this is one of those shows that needs to be seen without too much explanatory context.

Ghost Stories

Presented by Realscape Productions Athenaeum Theatre Producers: Amy Johnson and Nathan Alexander for Realscape Productions Writers: Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman Director: Jeremy Dyson, Sean Holmes and Andy Nyman Associate Director: Richard Carroll Production Design: Jon Bauser Lighting Design: James Farncombe Sound Design: Nick Manning Special Effects: Scott Penrose Original UK Produces: The Lyric Hammersmith Cast: Steve Rodgers, Jay Laga’aia, Darcy Brown, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Matt Heyward Tickets: from $44.95

Ghost Stories will be performed until 5 November in Melbourne before touring to Adelaide from 7 December.

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Thuy On is Reviews Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the books editor of The Big issue for 8 years. Her first book, a collection of poetry called Turbulence, came out in 2020 and was published by University of Western Australia Press (UWAP). Her next collection, Decadence, was published in July 2022, also by UWAP. Twitter: @thuy_on

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ghost Stories’ on Netflix, a Hit-and-Miss Indian Horror Anthology

Where to stream:.

  • Ghost Stories (2019)

Netflix’s Ghost Stories is a collection of Indian short films by directors Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar and Dibakar Banerjee — the same lineup as two other anthologies, 2013’s Bombay Talkies and 2018’s Netflix original Lust Stories . It’s a novelty of sorts, as Hindi cinema is almost entirely bereft of horror movies, so it’s no surprise to learn that all four participants have never taken a stab at the genre before. No doubt, this group of directors boasts plenty of experience, but are they able to effectively cross over to an unfamiliar genre?

GHOST STORIES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Note, all segments are untitled. First is Akhtar’s, about Sameera (Janhvi Kapoor), a nurse assigned to take care of an old woman who lives alone in her sprawling, crumbling apartment. The bedridden Mrs. Malik (Surekha Sikri) suffers from dementia, and a stroke left her partially paralyzed, so how much credence do you give to her mutterings about her son, who she says is home, even though there’s no physical evidence of such? Sameera is a little freaked out, but she’s preoccupied with drugging up poor Mrs. Malik so she can invite her boyfriend (Vijay Varma) over for a little somethin-somethin. Will they ignore the omnipresent yucky smell and that weird dragging noise in the hallway, or is the mood like, totally ruined now?

Film No. 2 is Kashyap’s. Neha (Sobhita Dhulipala) is pregnant. She babysits young Ansh (Zachary Braz) until his father (Pavail Gulati) finishes working, usually late. Her husband (Sagar Arya) doesn’t seem keen on the situation, but he tends to come home late, too. This leaves lots of time for Neha to exhibit signs that she’s not all right in the noggin: She feeds a bird (a crow I think; it goes unseen) that lives in a hole in the attic ceiling; she cuddles and “feeds” creepy baby dolls, as if practicing for the real thing; she has HORRIBLY DISTURBING DREAMS that we can’t be sure aren’t real. And why exactly is Ansh drawing cute pictures of Neha with dense black scribbles where the baby should be?

Next up is Banjeree, who crafts a tale of an unnamed man (Sukant Goel) who gets lost on the way home from work one day and stumbles into a terrifying political allegory. In a small town called Smalltown — subtle! — there appears to be some sort of heavily localized zombieish apocalypse happening. He meets a little boy (Aditya Shetty) and girl (Eva Ameet Pardeshi) who tell him the supernatural “rules” they follow in order to avoid being eaten alive by the roaring people-things roaming around outside. Will he interpret the social commentary before his bowels get yanked out for barbecue?

Finally, Johar crafts a love story that gets weird real quick — too weird. Ira (Mrunal Thakur) appears to have met the love of her life in Dhruv (Avinash Tiwary): He’s handsome, megarich and very close to his dear Granny. Problem is, dear Granny is dead, and he says he needs her blessing before they wed. The camera slowly pans to a photo of Granny. THIS WILL BE FINE, Ira lies to herself. JUST FINE. Yet she sticks with Dhruv, because she’s in love, and she’ll soon be living in Granny’s posh mansion. The wedding night is awkward, because we get the feeling that Granny’s watching as Dhruv puts his face in some sexy places. Ira’s moaning as the bedroom door swings open by itself. Looks like Dhruv didn’t say good night to Granny, who, notably, is played by nobody, because she’s invisible. So who should poor, confused Ira call first — a divorce lawyer or a medium?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A little bit of mother! , a little bit of Eraserhead and a little bit of the 1986 The Fly remake — and that’s just the Kashyap film. Otherwise, Ghost Stories is kind of like Creepshow with its sense of humor surgically extracted.

Performance Worth Watching: Dhulipala fully commits to the role of a soon-to-be mom uncertain of her child-rearing faculties. She’s good, and has the support of a strong screenplay.

Memorable Dialogue: “SQUAWWWK!” — Neha expresses her horror in crowspeak, putting into non-words exactly the non-words we feel during this short’s best/worst/most upsetting moments.

Sex and Skin: A little implied whatnot, but otherwise, not much to discuss here.

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Our Take: Ever watched an anthology where each short was consistently good? Me neither. Akhtar’s film kicks up an effective musty-dusty atmosphere, and features a few instances of impressive framing and camerawork, but it’s incoherent down the stretch, and doesn’t generate enough potent dread to distract us from that fact. Banjeree’s contribution is thematically ambitious, but tonally inconsistent; it leans toward comedy, but doesn’t fully commit. And Johar’s film is the most accessible and conventional, but the most drab; it’s an idiot plot with a creepy sleepwalker who wanders absolutely nowhere, an overly stern housekeeper (sigh) and a protagonist who wanders… very… slowly… through the house in her flimsy nightie… turning… forbidden… doorknobs… and never… turning… on… a goddamn… light. Yawn.

So be thankful for Kashyap’s short, which saves Ghost Stories from persistent mediocrity. Its color palette is best described as cooled-corpse blue, all the better to sufficiently chill us. The director has clearly studied Lynch, Cronenberg and Aronofsky, and effectively ladles up some steaming-hot mommy-to-be anxieties from deep, dark subconscious regions. Its steady-dready somber pace pays off with a handful of images — very effectively using practical effects and makeup — that sear themselves into the back of your skull. Dust off the psychic sandblaster for this one.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Kashyap’s short is brilliant, as overtly disturbing as it is suggestive. The others are imminently skippable.

Should you stream or skip the Indian horror anthology #GhostStories on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) January 4, 2020

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

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Ghost Stories

  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Cast of Ghost Stories

Time Out says

A bloody fun night out – if you dare

How do you review a show that relies on its secrets being kept? That implores you not to talk about it, lest you ruin the fun for everyone else? That's the bind any reviewer heading along to Ghost Stories faces; to explain what the show is like, without revealing, well, anything really.

Billed as a live horror movie – played out in front of you, on stage – this  British horror-themed play written by Jeremy Dyson ( The League of Gentlemen ) and Andy Nyman (Derren Brown TV and live shows,   Peaky Blinders ) certainly offers scares aplenty. The question is, what kind of scares are you actually in for?

I must admit, I'm not the jumpy kind, and I don't scare too easily – which means I'm perpetually in search of something that will deliver the thrill of a proper jump-scare. The trailers certainly promised it so; filled with white-faced punters in the audience, it shows the scares, but never the stage. What is it they say about what you can't see?

Alas, Ghost Stories sits more in the deliciously schlocky, B-grade horror film space for me, rather than anything Blair Witch -worthy of genuine fear. But this doesn't make it any less enjoyable. In fact, perhaps it makes it moreso.

Three creepy stories, told with a generous swathe of winking humour, spin their narratives around a lecture made by Professor Phillip Goodman (Steve Rodgers) – a man who questions the very validity of the stories he has collected in his pursuit of the supernatural. Delivered as a lecture with montages, it's an unusual structure for a play, and perhaps suffers from that sinking feeling like we're back at University, rather than watching something spooky.

Rodgers is excellent though, pacing it all perfectly as he brings the audience on side, before we start to question it all after something malicious or monstorous jumps out at us. First up is Jay Laga'aia as Tony Matthews, a security guard who stumbles upon some bumps in the night. Laga'aia is top tier in a role that suffers from too many long pauses – an attempt to build tension which instead just feels dull – but he capitalises on these moments, filling them with character.

Darcy Brown is Simon Rifkind, a kid that finds himself on a deserted road late at night. Despite a truly cheesy (but immensely fun) horror storyline, Brown leans in – perhaps a testament to the direction of trio  Jeremy Dyson, Sean Holmes and Andy Nyman, who seem to understand their source text.

This is probably the best set piece of the three, accompanied by some of the best mood-setting lighting I've seen on stage of late. In fact, all of Jon Bausor's production design is on point, and along with the lighting, aids in building the narrative perfectly. Special effects by Scott Penrose are fun for what they are – but in this day and age of film technology and digital SF, I wonder if Ghost Stories suffers from our general lack of wonder and amazement when something is executed live in front of us. There are limitations, after all.

Nick Simpson-Deeks is slimy banker Mike Priddle in a role he feels made for. Although some of his jokes fall flat, he's at his best when he's not playing for the audience's laughs. Add a fun little twist at the end, and Ghost Stories wraps itself up in a nice little schlock-horror bow.

If you go in expecting to be scared off your seat, you may be disappointed. But accept it for what it is – a bloody fun night out for B-grade horror afficionados and fans of the supernatural – and you'll be a happy little camper. BYO torch.

Ghost Stories plays until November 5, 2022. Get your tickets here .

Want more Melbourne theatre?   Check out our list of the best theatre and musicals this month.

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Ghost Stories Review

Scared sheetless..

Ghost Stories Review - IGN Image

“The brain sees what it wants to see” is the refrain Professor Goodman clings to whenever he faces the inexplicable. Unsurprisingly his rational worldview is called into question time and again in Ghost Stories – a smart, haunting, and relentlessly inventive collection of supernatural tales.

Adapted from the successful West End play by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, Ghost Stories not only revives but elevates the old horror movie format of the portmanteau. Long synonymous with Britain’s second horror studio Amicus, the form typically draws together four or five short horror tales within a framing narrative.

Ghost Stories Posters

ghost stories show review

Ghost Stories focuses on three tales of the unexplained, with the protagonist of each recounting their uncanny experience to Nyman’s sceptic Professor. To go into the set-up and specifics of each story would be to defang them, but each one has its own charms and plays with a different aspect of the supernatural. It starts with suspenseful and terrorising (Paul Whitehouse’s opening segment), then pivots into something utterly bonkers and satanic (Alex Lawther’s middle section), before concluding with Martin Freeman's melancholic and eerie closer. The performances are wonderful throughout, with each actor carrying their individual segments brilliantly.

Confronted with these stories Professor Goodman desperately searches for a rational explanation – “the brain sees what it wants to see” – but it's a position that becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Unlike those old Amicus movies, the framing device here isn’t a conceit to draw together disparate tales – it’s something much more considered and satisfying. Goodman becomes far more embroiled than the Crypt Keeper ever was.

While Ghost Stories is, strictly speaking, Nyman and Dyson’s first horror movie, their varied careers have shown a deep love and knowledge of the genre, and that lifetime of obsession seeps into every aspect of this movie.

At a technical level, you can feel its directors gleefully trying their hands at every type of scare. Some of its best scenes rely upon cinematic sleight-of-hand – moments where you’re shown something unsettling but only fleetingly, left to ponder over what you just saw or half-saw. It creates a gnawing uncertainty, an effect born from the kind of ambiguity few contemporary horror films choose to wield.

Another great example is how Freeman’s tale makes use of the horror of the unseen, its ethereal climax recalls Jonathan Miller’s famous adaptation of Whistle and I’ll Come to You – the ghostly presence is implied, but in a way that only heightens its impact. That said, there’s something deeply mischievous about Ghost Stories, too – so while it maintains a gentlemanly approach in eliciting its scares for the most part, it’s not above letting rip and throwing something grotesque up on screen.

But below the technical achievements, you can sense this awareness of tradition in the stories themselves. There’s something deeply British about these tales that alludes to a lifetime of patient and perverse study. These are stories that take place by the seaside and woodland, in the stalls of a cathedral, on moors, and along train tracks – the settings of some of the greatest English ghost stories. Similarly, the banal and supernatural combine to create powerful uncanny effects – it's uniquely sinister glimpsing the supernatural when it’s illuminated by the red brake light of a Volvo.

Ghost Stories aims to terrify you, evoking a reverence for the unseen. But occasionally, it’s more than content to simply horrify you, revealing something that will make you recoil. And when there’s no other option left, it’s happy to gross you out, shoving something gruesome down your throat. While it displays a deep love of the genre in which it enters, Ghost Stories never feels derivate or trite. Nyman and Dyson have used their encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre to create a film that feels familiar but when set against the contemporary horror movie strangely original.

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Ghost Stories

2017, Horror/Mystery & thriller, 1h 37m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Ghost Stories offers a well-crafted, skillfully told horror anthology that cleverly toys with genre tropes while adding a few devilishly frightful twists. Read critic reviews

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Ghost stories videos, ghost stories   photos.

Professor Phillip Goodman devotes his life to exposing phony psychics and fraudulent supernatural shenanigans. His skepticism soon gets put to the test when he receives news of three chilling and inexplicable cases -- disturbing visions in an abandoned asylum, a car accident deep in the woods and the spirit of an unborn child. Even scarier -- each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor's own life.

Genre: Horror, Mystery & thriller

Original Language: English

Director: Jeremy Dyson , Andy Nyman

Producer: Claire Jones , Robin Gutch

Writer: Jeremy Dyson , Andy Nyman

Release Date (Theaters): Apr 20, 2018  limited

Release Date (Streaming): Jul 17, 2018

Box Office (Gross USA): $132.9K

Runtime: 1h 37m

Distributor: IFC Midnight

Production Co: IFC Films, Warp Films, Lionsgate, Altitude Film Entertainment

Cast & Crew

Martin Freeman

Mike Priddle

Professor Goodman

Paul Whitehouse

Tony Matthews

Alex Lawther

Simon Rifkind

Paul Warren

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

Father Emery

Nicholas Burns

Mark van Rhys

Louise Atkins

Jeremy Dyson

Screenwriter

Claire Jones

Robin Gutch

Executive Producer

Graham Begg

Will Clarke

Hugo Heppell

Ole Bratt Birkeland

Cinematographer

Billy Sneddon

Film Editing

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Critic Reviews for Ghost Stories

Audience reviews for ghost stories.

Three ghost stories in a frame narrative that starts out slowly and what seems to be unnecessarily complicated. The devil is in the details, though and ultimately there is a pay-off, maybe even warranting another viewing or two. As for the ghost stories, they are wonderfully unpleasant and have quite a few jump scares. Overall, and without entering spoiler territory, I appreciated what the movie attempted and was pretty entertained, but somehow it could have achieved even more in every aspect.

ghost stories show review

What you've got here are three relatively intriguing horror concepts that end just as they are getting interesting held together by a pretty mediocre central story.

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Film Review: ‘Ghost Stories’

Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson adapt their spooky 2010 stage show into a cleverly atmospheric creeper that lacks a primal scream.

By Guy Lodge

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'Ghost Stories' Review: Low-Key Scares In a British Throwback Horror

Uncanny wraiths aren’t the only spectres drifting through “ Ghost Stories ,” Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson ‘s stylish, chain-rattling adaptation of their 2010 British stage smash: The more explicable spirits of William Castle and Amicus Productions hang about, too, in its blend of old-school spookhouse scares and chilly psychological realism. A throwback to the rickety portmanteau structure so prevalent in U.K. horror in the mid-20th century, Nyman and Dyson’s debut feature works niftily as an anthology, threading a slender investigative narrative through a trio of anxious, economically executed tales of unnerving hauntings in contemporary Yorkshire. It’s when the film attempts to bind all three into a more ambitious head trip that things come unstuck: A climactic rug-pull that worked grandly on stage is less satisfying on screen, leaving the film less a banquet than a platter of tasty appetizers — served suitably cold, of course.

That said, it’s easy to see a small, dedicated cult building around “Ghost Stories,” which will be released Stateside by IFC Midnight after warm festival receptions in London and SXSW. Cinephilic horror-heads who share the filmmakers’ particular vintage B-movie affections will thrill to the low-key, lo-fi thrills on offer here; more tingly than terrifying, it’s not an exercise for genre fiends of a harder, more contemporary persuasion. British audiences, meanwhile, will be most in tune with the film’s cultural reference points and the dank, dilapidated Northern ambience it effectively cultivates. Dyson is best known domestically as a member of offbeat U.K. comedy collective The League of Gentlemen,” and a warped streak of his trademark humor is present here, if less prevalent than in the stage show.

While the three vignettes within the whole have been recast with more prominent names — with Martin Freeman , in the tricksiest role, the film’s biggest marquee attraction — the multi-tasking Nyman remains in place as the protagonist of the piece, spiritual skeptic Professor Philip Goodman. A loner raised in a strict, fractious Jewish family, he evidently channels much of the psychological baggage from his childhood into presenting a modestly popular TV show, “Psychic Cheats,” in which he exposes an assortment of professed mediums and ghost-hunters as exploitative frauds. Nyman and Dyson’s screenplay flickers with intriguing statements on religion and anti-Semitism, though never quite follows through.

Goodman’s firm conviction is unsettled, however, when a once like-minded psychologist presents him with three reports of unexplained supernatural encounters — and so the rattletrap ride begins. In the first, a jaded nightwatchman (Paul Whitehouse) is caught off his guard when a poltergeist seemingly makes its presence known in the creepily derelict psychiatric hospital he’s assigned to monitor; the second finds a nerve-raddled teenager (Alex Lawther, on terrifically haunted form) beset by an indeterminate demon on a nighttime drive through the woods. As a supercilious banker who finds his home spectrally invaded on the night his wife goes into labor, Freeman anchors the third, which is most heavily strewn with symbolic signposts and and keys toward the climax; the “Sherlock” star keeps his tongue teasingly in cheek throughout.

None of these scenarios is especially distinct or disquieting on paper: It’s the formal elegance with which Nyman and Dyson, with a wallop of an assist from their excellent cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland, play up tension between the seen, the unseen and the shadow-shrouded that makes these uncomplicated setups screechily sing. Far from the prettily decayed Victoriana associated with the genre, “Ghost Stories” instead finds clammily tangible, tea-stained atmosphere in the squat, overcast plainness of British suburbia — its palette of bilious browns and greens giving way to red-slashed, silver-misted darkness when the ghosts gather.

As such, the film smartly honors and subtly expands the technical limits of its theatrical source, but still can’t quite pull off the dimension-switching leap required by its finale — flirting with, but ultimately pulling back from, a more avant-garde shift into the unconscious. One wonders if the recasting process should have extended to the lead: Engagingly befuddled at the outset, Nyman shortsells the emotional intensity of the later stages. There’s the phantom of a psychothriller for the ages inside “Ghost Stories” that never quite fights its way out of the film’s tightly structured creepshow homage, but the goosebumps it raises are real, and honestly earned.

Reviewed at Showcase Newham, London, March 27, 2018. (In London, Busan, SXSW festivals.) Running time: 98 MIN.

  • Production: (U.K.) An IFC Midnight (in U.S.)/Lionsgate (in U.K.) release of a Warp Films production in association with Catalyst Global Media, Screen Yorkshire. (International sales: Altitude Films, London.) Producers: Claire Jones, Robin Gutch. Executive producers: Charlotte Walls, Gideon Lyons, Graham Begg, Hugo Heppell, Zygi Kamasa, Will Clarke, Andy Mayson, Mike Runagall, Peter Balm, Barry Ryan, Niall Shamma, Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman.
  • Crew: Directors, screenplay: Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman, adapted from their stage play. Camera (color, widescreen): Ole Bratt Birkeland. Editor: Billy Sneddon. Music: Frank Ilfman.
  • With: Andy Nyman, Martin Freeman, Alex Lawther, Paul Whitehouse , Samuel Bottomley, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Daniel Hill, Leonard Byrne, Jake Davies, Nicholas Burns, Oliver Woollford, Callum Goulden.

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Ghost Stories Review: Once Upon A Time In Bollywood

Ghost Stories (Netflix) review: Once upon a time in Bollywood

Released on New Year’s Day,  Ghost Stories  (Netflix) combines the efforts of four of Bollywood’s leading filmmakers into a two-and-a-half-hour horror anthology, one divorced from India’s theatrical model and musical, melodramatic expectations. You’d expect, then, that the opportunity to embrace full creative freedom would have been grasped a bit more enthusiastically than it is here;  Ghost Stories  boasts only one stand-out short — a political analogy wrapped up in rural cannibalism focusing on two young children (Aditya Shetty and Eva Ameet Pardeshi) by Dibakar Banerjee — and several middling entries that don’t suggest a great future for India’s burgeoning scare scene.

ghost stories show review

Joining Banerjee are Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, and Karan Johar, who all contribute radically different shorts running the entire gamut of universally scary elements and culturally-specific embellishments. Banerjee’s is the best of them, and Johar’s glossy haunting is the worst. The other two are fine, lavishly produced and acted well, but a little thematically thin. How these stories fuse the supernatural and the corporeal doesn’t always work, and when it does it could often stand to work better, but using horror as a means by which to address the nation’s real cultural foibles — as the Oscar-winning short documentary Period. End of Sentence, about the stigma of menstruation in rural India, capably proved there’s a way to go in some respects — is a smart use of a neglected genre.

The presence of  Ghost Stories  on Netflix will help its reach and, hopefully, encourage a freer creative climate, which is yet another upside of the streaming giant’s international influence that its detractors reliably ignore. This isn’t the best example of what India can do in the field, but it’s a start.

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Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

The Book of Boba Fett season 1, episode 3 recap - "Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa"

The Book of Boba Fett season 1, episode 3 recap - "Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa"

Spoiled Brats ending explained - will the brats learn their lesson?

Spoiled Brats ending explained - will the brats learn their lesson?

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ghost stories show review

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Ghost Stories Review (Netflix): Dibakar Banerjee’s Soul-Shaking & Spine-Chilling Story Stands Out From The Rest

The two and half hour approx film works in half and disappoints equally..

ghost stories show review

Directors : Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar

Streaming On : Netflix

Ghost Stories Review (Netflix) : What’s It About? & How’s The Screenplay?

Netflix’s latest anthology Ghost Stories has 4 different horror stories directed by Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar each. All four directed Lust Stories for Netflix earlier and now they are back to scare the hell out of you.

Zoya Akhtar’s segment starring Janhvi Kapoor, Surekha Sikri & Vijay Varma is a story about an old lady on her death bed and a nurse who has been appointed to take her care. As the nurse reaches her house she starts having some supernatural experiences.

Anurag Kashyap’s segment comes in a psychological horror zone. It’s about a woman who is going through the trauma of her miscarriage and is second time pregnant. How her nephew’s overtly affection and her own negative thoughts manifest into some really creepy happenings makes the basic plot.

Dibakar Banerjee’s segment talks about how the discrimination between powerful and underprivileged people can take a nightmarish turn.

Karan Johar tells the story of a girl named Ira. She gets married to a boy who along with his family is connected with “granny” even after her death. What happens when Ira takes charge of investigating the reality and challenges granny to show up?

Watch out Ghost Stories to know.

Ghost Stories Review (Netflix): Dibakar Banerjee's Soul-Shaking & Spine-Chilling Story Stands Out From The Rest

The two and half hour approx film works in half and disappoints equally. Zoya Akhtar’s story is more about cinematic art and technicalities. You’ll love the way her camera moves from one place to another, you’ll like the performances but everything doesn’t add up to hook you because the story doesn’t offer anything new and on top of that the screenplay is as weak as it gets. There’s absolutely nothing and it won’t be wrong to call the story even meaningless. It seems like a last-minute assignment submission to Netflix by Zoya.

Anurag Kashyap tries to create a creepy and eerie environment that he successfully creates to some extent. However, the very niche treatment leaves the audience more baffled and less entertained.

It’s the right time when Kashyap should understand that stories are meant to engage a large section of the audience, not a tiny set of people who satisfy themselves with your brilliant technical skills as a director.

Dibakar Banerjee saves the sinking ship of Ghost Stories single-handedly. His segment is not just engaging but extremely disturbing. As a regular Netflix audience, I must say his segment creeped the hell out of me. Dibakar creates an environment that is eerie, painful, emotionally disturbing, spine chilling and shiver-inducing. Never before I felt as scared as I felt while watching this one. The detail with which he has shown the events will haunt you for a long time.

I didn’t expect much from Karan Johar but honestly, he didn’t disappoint. He doesn’t tell a great horror story but the man deserves accolades for making a good debut. His story is actually spooky if not a hardcore scary one.

Ghost Stories (2020) Review : How Are The Performances?

The film is good on the performance perspective. All the performances are good but Janhvi Kapoor, Surekha Sikri, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sukant Goel, Aditya Shetty, Avinash Tiwary & Mrunal Thakur deserve special mention.

Janhvi Kapoor comes out of her comfort zone and impresses with her act. Surekha Sikri is a brilliant actor and she outshines even though she plays a restricted role. Sobhita Dhulipala gives another stunning performance after Made In Heaven. She doesn’t have many dialogues but still keeps you hooked.

Sukant Goel & child artist Aditya Shetty add value to Dibakar Banerjee’s extremely engaging story. Both of them give a mindblowing performance and make their characters believable.

Avinash Tiwary & Mrunal Thakur are so amazing. We’ve witnessed the excellent acting chops of Avinash in Laila Majnu and even though he doesn’t play as challenging character as that, he creates a very good impression here as well. Mrunal Thakur is excellent too.

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Ghost Stories Review (Netflix) : Final Verdict

Watch Ghost Stories for Dibakar Banerjee’s story. Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar & Karan Johar’s stories will find limited appreciation from the audience but Dibakar’s one makes this film a must-watch.

Zoya Akhtar: 2/5 Anurag Kashyap: 2.5/5 Dibakar Banerjee 4.5/5 Karan Johar: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

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Movie Review: Three Misses, One Hit in Netflix's 'Ghost Stories'

Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar have collaborated on another anthology – this time of horror short films.

Movie Review: Three Misses, One Hit in Netflix's 'Ghost Stories'

A still from 'Ghost Stories'.

Tanul Thakur

After Bombay Talkies (2013) and Lust Stories (2018), four Indian filmmakers – Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar – have collaborated again on an anthology, Ghost Stories , now streaming on Netflix.

Their earlier movies revolved around cinephilia and lust, while this recent release, as the name attests, deals with horror, a genre that Akhtar and Johar have not tried before – though technically neither have Kashyap or Banerjee, but at least their past films explored darker human psyches. It seems fitting, then, that Ghost Stories starts and ends with shorts by Akhtar and Johar: two ‘novices’ ushering us in and out of this world – a relatively risky endeavour in a film about fear.

Akhtar’s short, Nurse – opening with a scene comprising recognisable horror film tropes (an overcast sky, a woman standing alone in a vast landscape marked by distinct cawing, a hen dropping dead to the ground) – signals an amateurishly ‘spooky!’ intent, but soon relaxes to find a more natural rhythm. Here, we meet Sameera (Jahnvi Kapoor), a young nurse in charge of an elderly ailing lady, Mrs Malik (Surekha Sikri), who, battered by delusions, keeps calling out for her son, Armaan. He’s nowhere to be seen or heard.

Also read: In a Tumultuous 2019, These Four Hindi Films Brought Out Our Shared Humanity

Akhtar sets up compelling parallels between the two women: Sameera is attractive in the present, Mrs Malik was in the past. Sameera waits for her boyfriend, Guddu (Vijay Varma), Mrs Malik for Armaan. Both have suffered the consequences of familial abandonment.

Akhtar uses mirrors to depict these similarities. There are several scenes where Sameera sees her image – sometimes reflected in one, at other times in multiple mirrors. When she wears Mrs Malik’s brooch, and looks at her reflection, whom does she see: herself or her patient? Later, we see them sitting side by side, their images locked in a nearby mirror. Sameera and Mrs Malik have something else in common: the long, desolate hallway connecting their rooms.

Nurse is a story of morbid hope – of premonition – where Mrs Malik hears a doorbell before it’s rung, thinking it is Armaan (not too different from Sameera’s wish that Guddu will come to see her). The conceit of premonition is also built in the segment’s aural design: in several scenes, we first hear the sound and then see its accompanying visual. There’s also some cheeky wordplay (“Do you think I’m deaf” said by Mrs Malik sounds a lot like “do you think I’m dead”).

But despite these technical ingenuities – and attention to detail – Nurse , ending with a banal twist, doesn’t quite work. Akhtar has taken a small, affecting story and tried to force-fit it into the genre of horror. Somewhere between wracking the nerve and brushing the heart, her short loses its way.

Kashyap’s segment, Bird , is centred on a young pregnant mother, Neha (Sobhita Dhulipala), who babysits her nephew (Zachary Braz) during the day. Presumably by accident, the similarities between Nurse and Bird are remarkable. Both derive their dramatic mileage from a ‘failed’ childhood (Neha, we’re told, couldn’t be a good daughter; the karmic question, then, seems: is she even allowed to be a mother?), feature mirrors in key scenes, make frequent use of hallways and involve pain-alleviating pills.

Neha’s house has an attic, hosting a nest, a crow and a few eggs. Every now and then, Neha feeds the crow, in effect caring for the eggs. The parallels here, too, between the two ‘characters’ are quite evident: the stairs leading to the first floor seems similar to the small ladder attached to the attic. The crow, like Neha, is a mother-to-be. Neha, by caring for the crow, is trying to atone for her childhood sins. We appreciate the implication: the house is a nest, and Neha is the crow.

Many of Kashyap’s feature films work as excellent, isolated set pieces – where a good film form materialises with full force – but often fail to come together as a whole. The director, by that reason alone, should make impressive short films (and his piece for me, in Lust Stories , was the best of the lot). Bird , though, isn’t nearly half as impressive. You can pick and dissect, and be sporadically impressed by individual frames and stray strands of motifs. There’s enough ambiguity here to keep you guessing – is this a story of multiple miscarriages, of a distant oedipal bond, of a lifelong guilt – but it struggles to find a sense of cohesion. Bird , in essence, lacks an umbilical cord, continually connecting the audiences with the director: the filmmaker’s baby, as a result, is stillborn.

Banerjee’s segment, Monster , is more symbolic than Kashyap’s and is by far the best piece of the quartet. It opens to an anonymous man (Sukant Goel) – identified as “Visitor” in the end credits – entering a deserted countryside, Bisgarah (“Smalltown”). The place has just two survivors, both of them unnamed – “Little Boy” (Aditya Shetty) and “Little Girl” (Eva Ameet Pardeshi) – who detail the laws of the land. The Saugarah (“Bigtown”) people, Visitor is told, “ate the people of Smalltown”. To temporarily survive, the people of Smalltown began eating their own. The rules, as explained by Little Boy, are these: “If you move, you’ll die; if you speak, you’ll die; they don’t eat those who eat.”

A dominant society setting the rules for others, which, if not followed, can spiral into you getting lynched. These rules reduce people of Smalltown to non-people, worse than ‘second-class citizens’, who are forced to self-annihilate. The Bigtown people, in contrast, have become cannibals; moving zombie-like, they all look the same from a distance – a terrifying commentary on the perils of monoculture. (At the end of the film, we finally meet the ‘real’ people of Bigtown, who have nothing but disdain for Smalltown – especially Councilman (Gulshan Deviah), who asks Visitor, “Are you interested in history? Bigtown was once a touchstone mine. It was the capital of the state. We’ll be great again.”)

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Monster is an excellent example of layered and symbolic storytelling. Using clever hints, Banerjee constantly sustains our interest. When Visitor enters an abandoned classroom, we see an incomplete map of India – with nearly its entire western coast, including Gujarat, erased – on the blackboard. In the next scene, Smalltown’s school principal is vomiting in the courtyard, standing near a tricolour drooping from a pole. A complex film, designed to inform by being obscure, succeeds not because it is difficult to understand, but because it invites multiple points of engagement and interpretations: it compels you to revisit the piece (a crucial element lacking in Bird ).

Further, Monster has wonderful performances (Shetty, in particular, deserves praise for portraying a dubious boy with deceptive ease), even has flashes of humour and is marked by consistently impressive writing. It has some powerful visuals (especially of Visitor holding hands, begging for mercy from a bloodthirsty mob, which is disturbingly reminiscent of Mohammed Naeem , in Jharkhand, a few years ago). But a truly remarkable bit about this short is how it resists simplification, right till the very end, while still being riveting. We don’t even know its design: was it a dream or was it real? Perhaps a bit of both: a (bad) dream slowly becoming real.

Among all the filmmakers, Johar has perhaps had the most fun in the last two versions of this series. Unburdened by audiences’ expectations and producer’s demands – of making a blockbuster – he’s given himself space to breathe. His short in Bombay Talkies felt personal and poignant, while his Lust Stories piece was deliciously subversive and meta. Here, though, like Akhtar, he seems to be burdened by form, of making a ‘horror’ film, and as a result, his is the most trope-ey and disappointing segment of the lot.

Granny is about Ira (Mrunal Thakur), a young woman marrying an affluent man, Dhruv (Avinash Tiwary), who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with his (dead) grandmother. Dhruv needs her permission for everything; he wishes her good night, without fail, as a daily ritual. Even the housekeepers are in awe of the old lady.

Ira, quite justifiably, feels spooked and sidelined. It’s a very Rebecca -like set-up, the similarity finding echoes in story (replace the dead wife with the dead grandmother), characters (shifty housekeepers) and production design (a claustrophobia-inducing mansion). But Johar’s methods of invoking horror are painfully clichéd: characters shooting menacing glances, a door creaking open, the housekeeper standing with a flashlight held close to her face (even when the room is washed with light).

Johar gives us very little to hold on to, except brief flashes of meta commentary. I laughed out loud when Ira bursts into “fuck you granny” and, later, the granny returning the favour with, “Look at my fucking face.” A different decade, a different medium and an incredible amount of change: 2001, 19 years later, seems to belong to a different century now, when it was “all about loving your (grand) parents”.

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‘ghost stories’: film review | lff 2017.

Martin Freeman co-stars in the British horror anthology 'Ghost Stories,' adapted from a hit London stage show.

By Stephen Dalton

Stephen Dalton

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'Ghost Stories' Review

First staged in Liverpool in 2010, the hit theater show Ghost Stories has so far enjoyed two long London runs plus detours to Toronto, Moscow, Sydney and beyond. Its multi-plot format pays homage to the golden age of portmanteau British horror films, from eerie Ealing Studios classics like Dead of Night to the campy low-budget shockers made by Amicus and Hammer in the late 1960s and early 1970s . So there is a certain satisfying symmetry in seeing this affectionate celluloid facsimile finally reborn as a big-screen adaptation, which has just world-premiered at the London Film Festival .

Like its stage blueprint, Ghost Stories  was written and directed by longtime friends Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson. Nyman also plays a central role in an ensemble cast that includes Martin Freeman. Dyson is part of the U.K. comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen, whose eponymous BBC television show paid similarly fond tribute to vintage Brit-horror movies. The humor is more muted here but still a key part of the tonal mix, which skews more towards knowingly creepy pastiche than hammy parody.

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Ghost Stories is a witty and well-crafted love letter to old-school horror tropes. Even if some local British references may get lost in translation, the film still has solid readymade appeal to genre-friendly fans and festivals, with the added commercial kick of Freeman’s marquee name. Lionsgate has picked up U.K. rights, and Altitude is selling the film internationally.

In the background framing story, Nyman plays Professor Philip Goodman, a TV investigator who specializes in debunking supernatural delusions and psychic hoaxes. But an unsettling encounter with his childhood hero leads Goodman to three unsolved cases that test his scientific skepticism to breaking point.

In the first, an embittered nightwatchman (Paul Whitehouse) with a tragic family history suffers terrifying visions while guarding a derelict building once used as an asylum for female patients. In the second, a nervy young man (Alex Lawther ) gets caught up in a nightmarish hit-and-run incident with a demonic beast in the depths of a misty forest. And the third stars Freeman as a wealthy ex-banker whose grand modernist mansion is invaded by poltergeists just as his heavily pregnant wife enters the late stages of a traumatic labor.

All three chapters contain button-pushing shocks and heart-pounding jump scares, but they are fairly mild by modern horror standards. However, Nyman and Dyson seed each story with cryptic motifs and cumulative clues that eventually bear fruit in the final act, when all of the main protagonists are revealed to be unreliable narrators. As the scattered jigsaw pieces come together, Nyman’s paranormal detective experiences his own descent into Hell involving a shotgun suicide, lingering childhood guilt and mind-bending rips in the fabric of reality. The final explanatory twist is preposterous, but chilling all the same.

Nyman and Dyson have updated Ghost Stories for this screenplay, adding new subplots and layers, but they have not entirely eliminated some structural flaws. Most obviously, while creaky celluloid horror clichés feel like ingenious novelties in a live theater setting, they risk becoming clichés again once they migrate back to the big screen. Juicy questions about religious intolerance and anti-Semitism are fleetingly raised during the story, but never fully explored. And this may be a minor grumble, but it feels oddly tone-deaf to have an overwhelmingly white male cast in 2017, with not a single onscreen female speaking role.

Visually, Ghost Stories offers a masterclass in a very British kind of gothic drabness, its crumbling pubs and deserted seaside trailer parks painted in a wintry palette of nicotine browns, despondent greens and funereal grays. Mostly shot in Dyson’s native county of Yorkshire, this purgatorial backdrop is a key element of the film’s moody, melancholy charm. Subtle stylistic nods to classic thrillers including Sleuth, The Evil Dead and An American Werewolf in London are also agreeable audience-nudging details. There is much to savor here, however familiar the ingredients.

Production companies: Warp Films, Altitude Film Entertainment, Catalyst Global Media Cast: Andy Nyman , Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther , Leonard Byrne Directors-screenwriters: Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman Producers: Robin Gutch , Mark Herbert, Claire Jones Cinematographer: Ole Bratt Birkeland Editor: Billy Sneddon Music: Haim Frank Ilfman Production design: Grant Montgomery Venue: London Film Festival Sales company: Altitude Film Sales, London

98 minutes 

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If you have fond memories of anthology horror films like “ Creepshow ” or long for the days when stories of the supernatural weren’t reliant on jump scares and increasingly stupid behavior from a film’s protagonists, then I have a pretty wonderful little genre treat for you. Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson ’s unexpectedly effective “Ghost Stories” reminds me of the horror films I loved as a kid without feeling like purely a retread of them. It’s inspired by everything from Robert Wise to Stanley Kubrick to Stephen King , and finds just the right balance between being a fun dissection of belief in the supernatural with honest-to-goodness scares. Like the subgenre that inspired it, "Ghost Stories" is just twisted enough to be humorous, but doesn’t shy at all on the creepy factor.

Co-director/co-writer Nyman also stars as Phillip Goodman, the host of a TV show that’s designed to debunk belief in the other side. The show within the film is called “Psychic Cheats,” but Goodman doesn’t just tear down the deceitful practices of charlatans who claim psychic powers—he takes a certain kind of conceited glee in what he does that’s almost unsettling. In the opening scene, he’s pretentiously debunking an alleged psychic and not really noticing the woman in the audience with whom the con artist was conversing who is clearly emotionally wrecked. From the beginning, it’s clear that Goodman is on a pedestal from which he needs to be righteously knocked.

And that’s exactly what’s about to happen. Goodman is contacted by Charles Cameron, a paranormal investigator from the ‘70s who inspired him as a boy. Cameron is Goodman’s role model, a similar practitioner of deconstructionist television, a man who disproved supernatural phenomena. Cameron has been long-considered dead, but he’s actually living in a mobile home, clinging to life. He tells Goodman that he has changed his mind about the other side and that there are three cases that made him do so, asking Goodman to look into this trio of unexplainable supernatural happenings. And, so, the rest of the film features Goodman finding the three haunted men, including a night watchman at an abandoned asylum, a young man who gets into a horrific car accident in the middle of nowhere, and Martin Freeman as a soon-to-be father who experiences a poltergeist.

The structure of “Ghost Stories” allows for three relatively standalone, self-contained short films, but they all work from a similar thematic foundation. All three of these cases involve people who have real-life issues that could be used to explain away their hauntings as tricks of the mind or hallucinations due to stress. For example, the subject of the first case had a wife who died from cancer and a daughter with something he calls locked-in syndrome. It’s no wonder he might see something that’s not there. But Goodman learns that these excuses about why people see ghosts don’t explain everything away and that his own past influences why he does what he does. There are really four narratives in “Ghost Stories,” and they’re all intertwined in a thematically satisfying way that’s rare for anthology horror films.

There’s also just some really effective genre filmmaking going on here. Nyman and Dyson understand the old-fashioned ghost story storytelling that’s so effective in that it’s not based on jump scares but simple, relatable elements. The first story within a story about the night watchman at the asylum thrives on so many classic horror elements like faulty power, flashlights that go out, and footsteps in the dark. It’s refreshing to see horror filmmaking that owes more to classics like “ The Haunting ” than the modern Blumhouse-inspired era of jump scares and gore. When each of the individual stories climaxes, it can be a bit of a letdown, but the way that Dyson and Nyman allow suspense to build in each story is remarkably effective. And then Martin Freeman pops up in the final act to inject it with a new, unexpected energy.

Horror has a long legacy of stories of people who think they know all there is to know about the supernatural, and learn about their ignorance the hard way. “Ghost Stories” doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any way, but it owes a debt to films that modern genre filmmakers might have forgotten. In that sense, it feels both old and new at the same time. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s honestly scary in ways most indie horror doesn’t even try to be. It’s the sound of a creaking door, footsteps when no one else is home, the sudden drop of temperature in the center of a room—these are ghost story elements that will always be timeless, and it’s so refreshing to see a modern horror movie that knows how to use them as well as “Ghost Stories.”

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Ghost Stories movie poster

Ghost Stories (2018)

Andy Nyman as Professor Philip Goodman

Martin Freeman as Mike Priddle

Alex Lawther as Simon Rifkind

Paul Whitehouse as Tony Matthews

Nicholas Burns as Mark van Rhys

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Father Emery

Louise Atkins as Steph

Daniel Hill as Mr Goodman

  • Jeremy Dyson

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  • Ole Bratt Birkeland
  • Billy Sneddon

Original Music Composer

  • Haim Frank Ilfman

Cinematographer

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Read Like the Wind

Ghost stories.

A collection of spooky short fiction by Edith Wharton and a historical nonfiction narrative about a woman who claimed to be haunted.

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This photo shows a child wearing a hooded skeleton costume and standing in dense fog against what appears to be a wooded landscape.

By Sadie Stein

Dear readers,

We all have our forms of escapism.

Whenever something very difficult has happened in my life, I have taken refuge in ghost stories. In the case of bereavement, the reasons seem clear enough; and maybe in every other case too — the possibility of the unexplainable can be a balm when the world itself feels beyond our understanding. October is designated haunting season, but the uncanny is perennial. There are almost too many ghost stories to choose from — Sarah Waters’s “Affinity, ” Marghanita Laski’s“The Victorian Chaise-Longue” and Virago’s peerless collection of ghost stories have all gotten me through a lot — but your time is valuable, so I’ll limit myself here to two of my favorite comfort reads.

“Ghosts,” by Edith Wharton

Fiction, 1937

“‘No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them,’ is much more than the cheap paradox it seems to many,” Wharton wrote in her preface to this collection. Wharton was not an avowed believer, but like many writers she found the ghost story to be the perfect medium (pun intended) for exploring questions of sexuality, class and consciousness. And given her mastery of all three subjects it should come as no surprise that the stories in this collection are a paradigm not just of the genre but of short fiction generally.

Because it collects stories written between 1902 and 1937, it’s a faithful chronicle of a changing world: Read “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” — featuring a full staff of servants — followed by “All Souls,’” among the last written in this collection, in which an elderly matron is left alone and helpless (one of the subtlest scary stories ever written, for my money). The relationship between classes is a recurring preoccupation; so is real estate; so is repression. Is my favorite “The Pomegranate Seed,” that amazing exploration of jealousy? Or “Miss Mary Pask,” a meditation on aging? Or maybe the Jamesian “The Eyes”? How to choose?

Read if you like: Any Edith Wharton novel; no Edith Wharton novels; if you love ghost stories; if you hate ghost stories Available from: NYRB Classics — and I do think this is one you’ll want a physical copy of, if only to better read before bed. But many of the stories can be found individually online. And here is a different version , not sequenced by Wharton, containing a number of the same stories.

“The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story,” by Kate Summerscale

Nonfiction, 2020

In 1938, a young matron in the London suburbs claimed to be the subject of a dramatic possession; as she recounted to the avid tabloids, her home was suddenly full of flying objects and her person regularly assaulted by violent attacks. She also suddenly had the ability to manifest live insects and pieces of jewelry. The story ultimately garnered the attention of a psychical researcher named Nandor Fodor, who became deeply invested in the case and made the woman, Alma Fielding, the subject of increasingly intrusive and public scientific tests. Was Fielding a fraud or a phenomenon — or was she just very unwell? The same could be asked of her investigator. And who, if anyone, was exploiting whom?

Summerscale, always a deft and humane storyteller, brings this deeply uncomfortable story to life with characteristic élan; the focus of one’s outrage and sympathy shifts from chapter to chapter, and the evocation of a (barely) between-the-wars Britain is vivid.

Read if you like: “Devil in the White City,” “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” Available from: Wherever fine books are sold. I like the Moravian in Bethlehem, Pa., because it’s supposedly haunted

Why don’t you …

See how it all started? I don’t think there’s a book in my library I recommend more than Deborah Blum’s “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Hunt for Proof of Life After Death.” (In fact, I seem to have loaned out both my copies!) Amid the spiritualism craze of the 19th century, a group of respected scholars, including Henry James’s brother, a titan of American psychology, seriously undertook psychical research — which proved thorny, inconclusive and utterly fascinating.

Hear a bump in the night? For obvious reasons, ghost stories make incredible audiobooks . Vernon Lee — the pen name of Violet Paget — was one of the great Victorian ghost-story scribes (often using the supernatural to encode queer themes), and “A Phantom Lover” is an atmospheric, eerie pleasure.

Get extra credit? One of Edith Wharton’s best ghost stories, “The Looking Glass,” is not in the collection I recommended above, but it is in her book “ The World Over. ” It’s about an aging beauty in thrall to spiritualism, and contains this incredible quote: “There was nothing she wouldn’t do for you, if ever for a minute you could get her to stop thinking of herself … and that’s saying a good deal, for a rich lady. Money’s an armor, you see; and there’s a few cracks in it. But Mrs. Clingsland was a loving nature, if only anybody’d shown her how to love. … Oh, dear, and wouldn’t she have been surprised if you’d told her that! Her that thought she was living up to her chin in love and love-making.”

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Ghost Stories review – Martin Freeman and Paul Whitehouse shine in dreamlike spookfest

Co-directed by Andy Nyman and The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson, this three-part portmanteau horror turns out a disturbing, atmospheric fable

Ghost Stories is a barnstormer of an entertainment, a fairground ride with dodgy brakes. It’s an anthology of creepy supernatural tales in the intensely English tradition of Amicus portmanteau movies from the 1960s, such as Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, or the Ealing classic Dead of Night. Each story is made individually stranger and tinglier by the way the film allows you to notice an overarching narrative between them, becoming increasingly visible through the uncanny accumulation of coincidental detail.

Writer-directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson have adapted it from their colossally successful stage show : Nyman is the actor, writer and magician who has devised productions for Derren Brown; Jeremy Dyson is the actor, comedy writer and co-creator of The League of Gentlemen. I never saw Ghost Stories in the theatre but I wonder if the broader, brasher moments might have been more effective live. On screen, it was the subtler touches I found more disturbing: the strange dreary worlds and interiors with a putrefying wintry light: a seaside caravan park, a crepuscular pub in the middle of the day, a blank modern church. The action is wrapped up with a time-honoured narrative trick that has been with us since cinema’s earliest days. It can be overused. But Nyman and Dyson pull it off with tremendous verve.

Nyman plays the lead: professor Philip Goodman, a lecturer, TV celebrity and paranormal debunker who is an atheist and rationalist, driven to expose hoaxes and frauds. But he is also in flight from a guilty and unhappy childhood: a father with an observant Jewish faith, who was heavy-handed with Philip and his older sister. Philip himself grew up hero-worshipping a 70s TV personality who was a debunker in much the way he is now, but who disappeared at the height of his fame – like a Lucan or a John Stonehouse – and was considered dead. Then Philip is astonished when this man contacts him out of the blue, revealing that his disappearance was to due a personal crisis, a belief that the supernatural might be real after all.

This man tells Philip to reopen the files on three of his cases that wouldn’t add up or submit to a rational explanation. Night watchman Tony, played by Paul Whitehouse , experienced a horrible vision. Schoolboy Simon, played by Alex Lawther, had a fright driving home. Retired City trader Mike, played by Martin Freeman, encountered a poltergeist: the spirit of his unborn child. Philip seeks all of them out, and we see their awful experiences in flashback, and Philip himself begins to sense that they may have some terrible, collective significance for him personally.

Whitehouse, Lawther and Freeman enjoy themselves greatly in their roles and give terrific support; perhaps especially Whitehouse as Tony, who commands the screen in what is the film’s most effective, yet determinedly downbeat scene. Philip has arranged to meet him in a gloomy but unsettlingly huge and empty pub. Tony is prickly, defensive, careworn, with jokey mannerisms and yet clearly always on the verge of hostility or even violence towards this nervy telly academic who has sought him out and wants to open up old wounds.

Lawther is fanatically intense as the young man who has been brought to near-breakdown by his experiences and by a dysfunctional home-life. There is an eerily surreal glimpse of his parents standing motionless at the kitchen sink with the tap running. Freeman’s Mike is a smarmy piece of work on his country estate – and a nasty little anti-Semite whose casual jibes to Philip about “your lot” bring us closer to a terrible flashback that lives perennially in Philip’s own head.

Ghost Stories is a very male film, dominated by male characters, but it is overtly about a macho sort of anxiety. It’s not a film that wants to be subtle – and, as I say, its unsubtler flourishes and jump scares may have been more potent in the theatre, like outrageously startling but cleverly managed stage illusions. But there’s a tremendous atmosphere to this picture, a dream-like oddness and offness to everything. Nyman and Dyson have created a weird world of menace, despair and decay.

  • London film festival 2017
  • Horror films
  • London film festival
  • Film adaptations
  • The League of Gentlemen

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Ghost stories, common sense media reviewers.

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English horror anthology is weirder than it is scary.

Ghost Stories Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Casts doubt on those who think they have all the a

Characters are mainly victims or oppressors in som

A man shoots himself in the head with a shotgun. C

More than one use of "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "bitch

Background smoking and drinking. Young bullies smo

Parents need to know that Ghost Stories is an English horror anthology that's probably weirder than it is scary, but it might appeal to the more adventurous horror fans among older teens. Language is the biggest issue, with several uses of "f--k," "s--t," and more. There are also plenty of jump scares and…

Positive Messages

Casts doubt on those who think they have all the answers and that everything can be explained away. Idea that there are always other possibilities.

Positive Role Models

Characters are mainly victims or oppressors in some way. No one is particularly brave or admirable.

Violence & Scariness

A man shoots himself in the head with a shotgun. Characters die. Bullies pick on a developmentally disabled boy. Jump scares, scary stuff. Car hits something in the woods. Fit of rage, tearing room apart.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

More than one use of "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "bitch," plus "Jesus Christ" and "oh my God" (as exclamations).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Background smoking and drinking. Young bullies smoke in one scene.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Ghost Stories is an English horror anthology that's probably weirder than it is scary, but it might appeal to the more adventurous horror fans among older teens. Language is the biggest issue, with several uses of "f--k," "s--t," and more. There are also plenty of jump scares and scenes of unsettling, scary stuff. A man shoots himself in the head, and there are scenes with fits of rage, death, and a car hitting something in the woods. Bullies pick on a developmentally disabled boy. Background/social drinking and smoking are shown from time to time, and bullies are shown smoking. Sex isn't really an issue. Martin Freeman co-stars. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

  • Parents say (2)
  • Kids say (3)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Too intense but yet not that satisfying...

Indie british horror, what's the story.

In GHOST STORIES, Professor Goodman ( Andy Nyman ) is the star of a TV show that debunks supernatural and paranormal phenomena. He's invited to meet with Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne), a paranormal investigator who originally inspired him, and Cameron gives Goodman a file containing three unsolved cases. The first involves a security guard (Paul Whitehouse) who sees a ghost while working the night shift in an old asylum. The second is about a teen boy ( Alex Lawther ) who claims to have hit something unholy in the woods with his car. And the third is Mike Priddle ( Martin Freeman ), an expectant father who received a visit from a poltergeist. Goodman returns to Cameron, claiming that all three cases are easily explainable via psychological means, but Cameron has at least one more shocking surprise up his sleeve.

Is It Any Good?

This old-fashioned horror anthology isn't terrifying or scream-inducing; instead, it's closer in spirit to the moody, clammy, atmospheric English movies of decades past that lovingly inspired it. Nyman and Jeremy Dyson co-wrote and co-directed Ghost Stories based on their hit stage play, and what the movie lacks in that real-life theatrical connection it makes up for in eerie, clever cinematography and editing. The asylum in the first segment consists of pitch-black corridors running off into infinity, but it's far from neat and tidy; it's littered with decades of sinister refuse. The teen boy's room is decorated with occult drawings of demons and monsters, making a simple doorway seem terribly unsettling.

Weirdly, one of the movie's creepiest sequences takes place in an open field in broad daylight. The filmmakers beautifully use the on-screen and the offscreen, the seen and the unseen, sounds and clever cuts to suggest, rather than show, its horrors. Still, anthology horror movies usually have a weak spot, and here it's the wraparound story. But even though savvy horror fans may groan at how things unfold, Ghost Stories is so stylish and so satisfying that it gets by on spirit alone.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Ghost Stories ' violence . How much is shown, and how much is implied or left offscreen? What part does sound play in the violence?

How scary is the movie? What's the appeal of horror movies?

How does the movie treat bullies ? How are they handled? Can you think of other ways to address the situation?

The movie asserts that "the brain only sees what it wants to see." Do you think this is true? Why? Are there potential, rational solutions for everything, or could there be things we don't quite understand?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : April 20, 2018
  • On DVD or streaming : September 4, 2018
  • Cast : Martin Freeman , Andy Nyman , Alex Lawther
  • Directors : Jeremy Dyson , Andy Nyman
  • Studio : IFC Midnight
  • Genre : Horror
  • Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
  • Run time : 98 minutes
  • MPAA rating : NR
  • Last updated : June 20, 2023

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Dread Central

‘The Ghost Writer’ Review: A Portrait of a Tortured Artist

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The Ghost Writer

I usually know if I’m going to like a film pretty early on. But that wasn’t the case with Paul Wilkins’  The Ghost Writer.  I kept going back and forth throughout the picture’s runtime. In fact, I am still a bit conflicted after watching and digesting. There are pieces that I really enjoyed but there are just as many that didn’t quite work, making  The Ghost Writer  something of a mixed bag.

Gill (Luke Mably) is an author living in the shadow of his more celebrated father. Determined to write a new book, Gill returns to the cabin where his dad did most of his work. During his stay, Gill happens upon an old manuscript his father was working on. While afflicted with writer’s block, Gill makes the fateful decision to appropriate his dad’s work as his own. But in doing so, he must confront his father’s demons. And some of his own. 

The Ghost Writer  has a satisfying conclusion where everything eventually   starts to make sense and fall into place. But the journey to get there is often harrowing (not in a good way) and meanders too much. It’s pretty apparent from the get-go that the characters Gill interacts with at the cabin are not real or at least not alive. Because their threat level is immediately identifiable as very low, they don’t come across as particularly imposing. With the first 60 minutes of the film lacking a credible threat, I had a hard time staying fully invested. 

Also Read: ‘Restore Point’ Review: A Richly Satisfying Tale of Science Fiction Noir

When Jane (Andrea Deck), who may well be a figment of Gill’s imagination, shows up, she helps to introduce the central mystery. But the viewer is given precious little information, likely to keep the final reveal from being too obvious. Because of that, I found myself a bit bored and frustrated. While the dynamic between Gill and Jane is often contentious, it doesn’t establish even a modicum of tension. 

Guy Fee and Paul Wilkins’ script devotes most of the first two acts to pitting Gill against his inner demons and personifying the horrors of the writing process. That piece is effectively rendered and I could relate to it. Moreover, there is some insightful commentary within about the way good art sometimes comes from a tortured place. But I wish  The Ghost Writer  had spent a little less time on that and made more room for some meatier narrative developments in the film’s first hour.

I enjoyed seeing Wilkins and Fee take some cues from  The Shining . There are a few narrative parallels and a number of homages to that influential effort. Aside from a tortured writer battling his inner demons, a portion of the proceedings are set in a hotel; Gill eventually starts writing with the assistance of an old typewriter, and there is a chilling development involving an axe. I do wish The Ghost Writer had tapped into a similar level of tension as  The Shining , though. What’s going on inside Jack’s mind is terrifyingly brought to life. Here, Gill’s demons just kind of exist without adding the requisite level of menace for which one hopes.

Also Read: ‘578 Magnum’ Review: New Thriller Puts Style Over Substance To Its Detriment

Without giving too much away, I can say there is a credible threat somewhere within the narrative. And we eventually get the full picture of that. But that doesn’t happen until well into the picture’s runtime. If the filmmakers had given us more breadcrumbs to raise the threat level a bit or made the characters with whom Gill interacts a little more ominous, that would have gone a long way toward evening out the pace. 

All in all, I enjoyed  The Ghost Writer . But I wanted more from the story. I wanted to be captivated. Sadly, I never reached the point of being fully immersed in the proceedings. With that said, I enjoyed the way things came together in the end. I also appreciated the   homages to The Shining and the commentary on the sometimes painful nature of the creative process. 

If you are interested in checking  The Ghost Writer  out for yourself, you can find the film on Digital and VOD now. 

  • ‘The Ghost Writer’

‘The Ghost Writer’ won’t be terribly memorable for most but there are still moments that work well.

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Sex, violence, 'Game of Thrones'-style power grabs — the new 'Shōgun' has it all

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David Bianculli

ghost stories show review

Anna Sawai plays translator Toda Mariko in the new FX series Shōgun . Katie Yu/FX hide caption

Anna Sawai plays translator Toda Mariko in the new FX series Shōgun .

The original Shōgun , on NBC, aired in 1980, when miniseries were the hottest things on television. ABC's Roots had broken all ratings records just three years before – and three years later, the star of Shōgun , Richard Chamberlain, would score another massive miniseries hit with ABC's The Thorn Birds .

Even then, adapting James Clavell's sprawling story of an English sea pilot's adventures in Japan in the year 1600, was quite a gamble. The original version avoided subtitles, for the most part, to reflect the confusion the newly arrived pilot, John Blackthorne, felt when encountering Japanese culture and its people.

Except for occasional narration by Orson Welles, who sometimes threw in some radio-style acting by interpreting what a warlord was saying, most viewers in 1980 were as clueless as the sailor in the story. Eventually, things became a bit clearer when one of the Japanese rulers, Lord Toranaga, appointed a trusted translator: Lady Mariko, to whom the pilot became increasingly, and dangerously, attracted.

Part of the great appeal of that miniseries was the powerful performance by Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga. Foreign film fans at the time knew him as the star of the original Seven Samurai. But the chemistry between Chamberlain as Blackthorne, and the Japanese actor Yoko Shimada as his translator Mariko, was a big part of it, too.

This new, 10-part interpretation of Shōgun , adapted for TV by the married writing team of Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, uses subtitles throughout – a choice that makes the narrative more immediately understandable. It also focuses just as strongly, and just as effectively, on the same three central figures.

ghost stories show review

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga Katie Yu/FX hide caption

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga

Lord Toranaga is played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who's so imposing that even his silences are powerful. The translator, Lady Mariko, is played by Anna Sawai, who brings to her character even more strength, mystery and charisma than in the 1980 version. And instead of the matinee-idol-handsome Chamberlain as pilot Blackthorne, we have Cosmo Jarvis – an actor who looks more ruggedly handsome, and sounds a lot like Richard Burton. It takes a while for the three characters, and actors, to share the screen – but when they finally do, it's entrancing.

This new Shōgun has other strong performances as well, but they're not the only things that make this 2024 version so successful. Special and visual effects have improved exponentially in the almost 45 years since the original Shōgun was televised, and it shows here: Every storm at sea, every battle scene and, especially, every earthquake is rendered with excitement and credibility.

And finally, there's the overarching story, which has Toranaga employing Blackthorne as his secret weapon in a deadly civil war. The power grabs among the five rulers are like the hostilities in The Game of Thrones – except instead of a Red Wedding, there's a Crimson Sky.

I went back and rewatched the original Shōgun to see if it holds up. It does. But the several directors who worked on Shōgun for FX deliver a new version that looks much more stunning. It's sexier, more violent, and even more thought-provoking and illuminating than the original ... all of which, in this context, are meant as compliments.

The first two episodes of Shōgun are televised on FX opening night, and streamed the next day on Hulu, with the remaining episodes presented weekly. Don't miss it: With this Shōgun , as with the original, the TV miniseries is alive and well.

RESORT 2025

By Mark Holgate

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Oh, old friend, how I’ve missed you. A year from last being in Paris for the shows, 12 months since last writing about The Row, and here I am, sitting once more at a show for Mary-Kate and Ashley’s label that has been doing quiet luxury—and sometimes not so quiet luxury—for so long now that they own it, lock, stock, and quadruple ply cashmere. They were doing quiet when it wasn’t even a whisper. Back then, you know, we just called it The Row. A lot has happened in fashion during that time—well, sure, the rather loud ascent of quiet luxury, for one thing—and coming back to see the newest work from the Olsens has seen a bit of a mood shift. They’re doubling down on their idea of making sure The Row represents not only how they see the world, but how they show it.

A few days ago, when the invitation arrived, it included a note expressly asking not to use your phone to shoot or film the collection. (Just to drive home the pre digital vibe, everyone was provided with a notebook and pencil.) And by the time you’re reading this review of their quite wonderful resort 2025 collection, it will have been some days since that show happened. Here’s likely why: A colleague mentioned on exiting that the runway was being shot on film, which takes time to come to life. It’s not quick. It’s not instant. And it can’t be deleted with a quick tap of the finger. Instead in its analog way, it creates images which are tangible physical objects which can stick around. A long time, if you look after them. Think about what The Row makes, and couldn’t you say exactly the same about that?

As to those things they make, here’s what looked like an absolute dream this time round, with the Olsens eschewing some of their more intense experiments in cocooning and draping, replacing them with a gorgeously thoughtful ease. That was well represented by the likes of the oversized and all enveloping comfort of two masculine-inflected coats, one black, one navy, and popped by the surprise of their accessories; a knitted hat encrusted with silver metal embellishments with the former, ginormous gold and ebony hoop earrings with the latter. That easiness was also evident in the way a burnished tan leather blazer was popped over another, with black lean pants; ditto the perfection of cut and fabric evident in a charcoal gray pantsuit.

Things took a bit more of an experimental turn, too. The ivory wooly shaggy robe coat, with its richly unfettered texture, secured with a knit sash belt whose tassels had been dyed red, somewhat redolent of north African Berber craft. Another robe coat, in the kind of black plissé fabric Issey Miyake might have used back in the day, had a whole lot of volume without weight; the model wearing it clutched it tight to her, and frankly I don’t blame her; I’d have clutched it like crazy too. The evening continued that story of texture (it’s been a strong refrain not only here but all season, particularly in Milan): the frayed fronds on a rawly woven ivory dress which slinked its way to the floor, or a fluid black top and pants embroidered with a gazillion shimmering beads.

And then, just to bring us back to what always seems to last and last and last, what the Olsens have made their life’s work at The Row, out came a simple gray cashmere sweater, slouchy, tactile, desirable, and a pair of simple gray pants, a look accessorized by what looked to me to be their now-classic Margaux bag. After that disappeared from view, the models did their final lap. My seatmate turned to me, and said, “Girl, so chic.” Never were truer words spoken.

Image may contain Fashion Adult Person Clothing Coat Footwear High Heel Shoe Cape and Cloak

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‘The Regime’ clicks as comedy but flails as satire

Kate winslet shines in an hbo miniseries as unsure of what it’s doing as the hilarious and unstable autocrat she plays.

ghost stories show review

We know Kate Winslet can play sad women. The queen of the HBO miniseries such as “ Mildred Pierce ” and “ Mare of Easttown ” has repeatedly delivered indelible, textured, riveting performances that reward repeated viewings. It’s a sign of her skill that the characters she brings to life endure even when the dramas in question turn out to suffer from plot holes or other problems.

But if you’ve seen her in the Ricky Gervais show “ Extras ,” you know Winslet also happens to be hilarious, and you may have wondered, as I have, when she’d finally let her funny side loose.

Enter “ The Regime ,” HBO’s six-episode miniseries about the messy dictator of a collapsing central European nation rich in cobalt and sugar beets, and an overdue showcase for Winslet’s comedy chops.

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The series follows Winslet as Chancellor Elena Vernham, a charismatic demagogue too busy battling a mostly invented illness to tend to her (fictional) nation’s economic woes. Largely confined to the palace, she’s tended by her submissive husband, Nicky (Guillaume Gallienne), and a crew of backbiting advisers who fearfully indulge her whims. Her most recent delusion — a mold infestation Elena insists is destroying her health — spurs her to summon a disgraced military officer, Corporal Herbert Zuback (Matthias Schoenaerts) to the palace to serve as her new moisture-measurer. Occupants of this thankless position must use a hygrometer to gauge the humidity of every room she enters. Zuback, whose bloody work massacring some miners recently earned him the title “Butcher,” clearly suspects he’s about to be punished. He looks large, basic and baffled as palace manager Agnes (Andrea Riseborough) ushers him through a number of grand staircases brimming with mold-eliminating workmen and explains his new duties for the chancellor and the stakes of getting it wrong.

Winslet’s grasp of the character is immediate, idiosyncratic and complete. The way she walks, the way she speaks (out of one corner of her mouth, so as to minimize contamination from other people’s air), the way she sings (off-key, proudly). The chancellor’s first encounter with Zuback doubles as the show’s best and most convincing argument for how Elena could possibly have come to power. She asks him what he knows, informs him he deserves love, orders him to meet in their dreams and — in their next meeting — interrogates him as to what they did there. Nonsensical, erratic and compelling, Elena winds up totally captivating Zuback. And his devotion to her health (via some rather primitive home remedies) eventually makes him her confidant. He edges out her husband, undermines her classist but otherwise nondescript advisers (including Pippa Haywood, who deserved meatier stuff) and prevails on Elena to pivot toward populist policies.

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Matters develop and devolve amusingly enough, with Winslet and Schoenaerts’ chemistry escalating into codependent insanity until the show gets — for this viewer, at least — a little too dark and consequential to sustain the comedy at which it genuinely excels.

“The Regime” boasts an impressive pedigree. Creator and showrunner Will Tracy , a former editor in chief of “The Onion,” made “The Menu” and worked on “Succession.” Directors Jessica Hobbs (who directed episodes of “ The Crown ”) and Stephen Frears (who directed the 2006 film “The Queen” and the 2017 historical drama “Victoria and Abdul”) have both demonstrated a long-standing interest in female rulers.

“The Regime” feels like a collective (and ribald) overcorrection to much of this former work. Take Winslet: Having portrayed all those smart, beleaguered, traumatized women — many of them American, with highly idiosyncratic dialects and accents she worked to get just right — she gets to cut loose here as a volatile, amoral, unchecked and unhinged demagogue with a made-up accent and a slight lisp.

As for Tracy, besides working on “Succession,” which borrowed heavily from real-life circumstances (being based on the Murdochs), he worked on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” — a research-intensive show obsessed with real-world details . One senses, in “The Regime,” a creative mind rebelling against the limitations any specific referent (or reality principle) might impose. Tracy, who makes a hobby of researching dictators, deliberately expunged anything in the series that could be construed as a parallel to real-world events. Also discernible is a desire to turn the volume up on the absurd aspects of kleptocracy — to make a project that’s all “Boar on the Floor” — the infamous, over-the-top “Succession” scene in which the patriarch makes his minions crawl and eat off the floor to prove their loyalty.

As for Hobbs and especially Frears: Having spent countless hours on stories about demure and dolefully respectable English queens operating within tight and sometimes punitive constraints, perhaps there’s some pleasure in getting to direct a libidinal female ruler who governs recklessly, from the id.

Understandable impulses, all, but they’re also reactive rather than generative — and likely to produce something that might have been more gratifying to make than it is to watch.

That said, the absurdity and excess of dictatorship is a rich subject! So is the slow devolution of an autocrat (usually male) as he grows soft and needy and petulant within his bubble. There’s the paranoia to consider. The strange, embarrassing iconography (Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un sitting on horses). The codependency with — and resentment of — various yes-men. It’s genuinely interesting to wonder what a female version of this might look like. “The Regime” suggests she might be pettily obsessed with how often her name appears in American headlines. That she might order the preservation of her father’s corpse and conduct hostile interviews with him at regular intervals (and tantrum if he showed signs of decay). That she might steal her consigliere’s child, imprison her predecessor (Hugh Grant!), get infatuated with a Rasputin knockoff and use the language of maternal seduction in her television addresses. She might wear skintight dresses with military lapels, sing off-key and — if conditions are right — eat dirt.

These are bizarre and tantalizing details. But they don’t add up to anything resembling a political story, which makes any emergent critique so broad it collapses into tautology. (Self-serving leaders are self-serving. Autocrats? Tyrannical!) Aside from Elena’s dealings with the Chinese and the Americans, there is no real account of how she governs — specifically, of her (surely nightmarish and at least semi-competent) enforcement systems outside the palace. Nor is there any clear sense of the opposing factions. Or of the people.

As ideological commentary, in other words, the series ends up more hobbled than potentiated by its fictional aspects. That doesn’t seem to be what Tracy wanted. “It’s an imaginary country, but it hopefully feels as though it’s taking place within a geopolitical reality that we would recognize, and that it says something about how foreign policy works and how these regimes thrive and operate,” he recently told The Hollywood Reporter . He has also described “The Regime” as a satire, a fairy tale and a love story. Those are not, in this show at least, compatible modes.

That firm commitment to non-specificity, combined with the absurdist excess that makes “The Regime” funny, produces a series so careful not to say anything in particular that it feels more like a cathartic exercise than a stand-alone story. Or like somebody telling you their dream. One can agree — Yup, that person you made up who did crazy things you also made up sure sounds like a handful! And indeed, as comedy, “The Regime” has a lot to offer. But satire is a fundamentally parasitic medium. It more or less requires a target. By insisting on its independence from any real-world government, “The Regime” (like Elena Vernham) risks getting so invested in making a spectacle it ends up standing for nothing.

The Regime (six episodes) premieres March 3 on HBO.

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  2. Ghost Stories Review

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  3. Theatre Review: Ghost Stories

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COMMENTS

  1. Ghost Stories review

    Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman's popular Ghost Stories, which premiered in London in 2010, finally makes its Australian debut with a local cast after being pushed back due to Covid. Directed by ...

  2. 'Ghost Stories' review

    This review of 'Ghost Stories' is from the Lyric Hammersmith in April 2019. It transfers to the Ambassadors Theatre in October. Having seen 'Ghost Stories' during its West End run, I ...

  3. Ghost Stories

    Sun 1 Aug 2010 16.45 EDT. A t the heart of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman's Ghost Stories is a thought-provoking and emotionally moving proposition: that paranormal phenomena do exist, but they are ...

  4. Review

    When Ghost Stories finished its West End run in 2015, we thought that we had seen the last of the horror masterpiece on the London stage. Plans were in place for a global tour, and the creative team were already talking about a movie adaptation, which hit the multiplexes last year to great critical fanfare (review below) Therefore, we were genuinely surprised to hear that the show would be ...

  5. Theatre review: Ghost Stories

    Theatre review: Ghost Stories. The Australian premiere of a London smash hit production thrills and entertains. The figure of Matt Heyward. Photo by Charles Alexander. Billed as not suitable for anyone under 15, this Australian realisation of a West End show that first made an appearance in 2010, is a fun, provocative and at times genuinely ...

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    Ghost Stories (2019) Netflix's Ghost Stories is a collection of Indian short films by directors Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar and Dibakar Banerjee — the same lineup as two other ...

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  8. Lilithia Reviews: Ghost Stories

    By LILITHIA REVIEWS. I waited patiently, and it was very much worth the wait. Produced by Amy Johnson and Nathan Alexander for Realscape Productions (AU), Jeremy Dyson, Sean Holmes, and Andy Nyman, and written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, Ghost Stories is a production that I've been waiting a very long time to see. I wanted to see the film adaptation, as I wasn't sure I'd ever get to ...

  9. Review: Ghost Stories Athenaeum Melbourne

    Three creepy stories, told with a generous swathe of winking humour, spin their narratives around a lecture made by Professor Phillip Goodman (Steve Rodgers) - a man who questions the very ...

  10. Ghost Stories Review

    Verdict. Ghost Stories aims to terrify you, evoking a reverence for the unseen. But occasionally, it's more than content to simply horrify you, revealing something that will make you recoil. And ...

  11. Ghost Stories

    Even scarier -- each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor's own life. Genre: Horror, Mystery & thriller. Original Language: English. Director: Jeremy Dyson ...

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  13. Ghost Stories Review: Once Upon A Time In Bollywood

    Summary. A thoroughly mixed Indian horror anthology which combines the efforts of four Hindi tastemakers. Released on New Year's Day, Ghost Stories (Netflix) combines the efforts of four of Bollywood's leading filmmakers into a two-and-a-half-hour horror anthology, one divorced from India's theatrical model and musical, melodramatic ...

  14. Ghost Stories (1997 TV series)

    Ghost Stories is an American horror anthology television series that ran from 1997 to 1998 on The Family Channel.. The show was narrated by Rip Torn and originally two episodes were presented back to back in an hour-long segment. However, towards the end of the series, it was broken down into 30 minute episodes with just one story, most featuring a style similar to episodes of The Twilight ...

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  19. 'Ghost Stories' Review

    First staged in Liverpool in 2010, the hit theater show Ghost Stories has so far enjoyed two long London runs plus detours to Toronto, Moscow, Sydney and beyond. Its multi-plot format pays homage ...

  20. Ghost Stories movie review & film summary (2018)

    Horror has a long legacy of stories of people who think they know all there is to know about the supernatural, and learn about their ignorance the hard way. "Ghost Stories" doesn't reinvent the wheel in any way, but it owes a debt to films that modern genre filmmakers might have forgotten. In that sense, it feels both old and new at the ...

  21. Ghost Stories!

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    Review by Lili Loofbourow. March 2, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EST ... He has also described "The Regime" as a satire, a fairy tale and a love story. Those are not, in this show at least, compatible modes.