Directed and co-written by Andy Nyman & Jeremy Dyson
Picturehouse, Liverpool
From 6th April 2018

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

First staged in Liverpool in 2010, and then in other theatres in Toronto, Moscow and Sydney, it has been adapted into this dark and very odd film.

It could have been set in any of the past four or five decades, such is its timeless quality.

Like its stage presentation the film was written and directed by Andy Nyman and the The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson, which, in a similar way to Ghost Stories, paid tribute to vintage British B-movies.

Nyman plays a central role in this celluloid version as a professor, who specialises in exposing the falsehoods, or so he believes, on supernatural happenings on his TV programme.

Set in Yorkshire he is presented with three unsolved cases that are clearly not a figment of the imagination of the people involved in each of the otherworldly occurrences.

The most intriguing case includes Paul Whitehouse – an excellent straight acting performance – as a chain smoking night watchman, who is bombarded by horrific visions while guarding a disused building, which once was used as an asylum for female patients.

The ending of Ghost Stories is extraordinary. You would never have expected it to end in the way that it did. Hats off to the supernatural!

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