It Follows and Ghost Stories

Horror is a divisive genre: for some it’s the purest form of cinema, a visceral experience of dug fingernails and sweaty palms; for others it's a low art form, taking short-cuts to emotions.

If I’m honest it’s always been a genre I’ve denied. As a teenager – unlike others in my age group - I never felt compelled to watch them. I remember as a child finding an old VHS labeled ‘Silence of the Lambs (Boys do not watch!)’ – ever the obedient kid, I didn’t watch. Even the name struck fear into me. Typically, horror is incredibly popular with a teen market; it’s illicit and forbidden, a chance to display courage in front of friends, a way to demonstrate maturity in youth. The only horror I watched as a teenager was Scream, which if anything is more of a heartfelt pastiche than loyal rendering.

This cover-art is terrifying.

Being a fan of Mark Kermode’s film reviews I’ve become more interested in the genre. He is a huge fan of horror, writing his PhD thesis and lecturing on the topic. He opposes the crash-bang-wallop of horror cinema, praising instead filmmakers who carefully marry music with mise-en-scene; in doing so create a safe environment for people to face their fears. Even though Kermode has proselytised the value of the genre, I didn’t truly become converted until I watched Stranger Things. I believe the Netflix series has served as a gateway drug into the slightly harder strains I’ll write about today. That show pastiched the 80’s movies of Carpenter and Spielberg, re-imagining them for a box-set generation. On reading up on the show and its references, I realised there’s a lot of good horror I’ve missed, all because I associated the genre with physical torture as opposed to mental suffering. I've since discovered good horror directors go medieval on your brain, shackling your mind to the rack, pulling your fears to the fore. Meanwhile, bad horror directors mistake ‘show don’t tell' storytelling, showing too much, making you feel sick rather than afraid.

Over the holidays I’ve watched two horrors, It Follows and Ghost Stories. The first was critically lauded on release, gaining art-house as well mainstream success. The director David Robert Mitchell explained how the movie originated from an anxiety dream he had as a child. In this nightmare he was constantly being followed. This 12A rated hallucination has been upgraded to a 15 for the movie. Along with the stalkers, Mitchell has added a sexual element. In his film a person is followed after having sex with a ‘carrier,’ the only way the following can stop is if the new host can pass on the disease to another.

The movie immediately disorientates you by throwing the viewer into a perverse situation. A girl in vest top and heels is seen sprinting out of a house. Her running is wild and frenzied. She arrives at her house distracted and uncommunicative. Her father asks if she’s ok. The girl gets into her car and makes her way to the beach. We cut to a new scene: a corpse lies in the sand, its leg snapped into an impossible position. The opening appears like a woman’s worst nightmare: a man chasing a girl down because she had the audacity to say ‘no.’ However, we soon find this isn’t a tale of misogyny but mystery.

In the next scene a young girl Jay is swimming in a pool. She’s blissful and content, revelling in her youth, dreaming of her date. Said date is Hugh, a charming college kid that takes her to see Charade, a movie where the male lead isn't what he seems. Whilst sitting down to watch Hepburn and Grant, Hugh sees something that spooks him, causing him to run outside for fresh air. He explains his exit with reasonable sanity, allowing for further dates. Soon it isn’t long before Jay and Hugh have turned a car into a makeshift bedroom, stripping their bodies of innocence and throwing their desires to the headrest. This moment of ecstasy jarringly gives way to a picture of terror. Jay is tied to a chair – again, the imagery suggests sexual abuse is imminent. However, it’s just a way to constrain Jay whilst Hugh tells her what he has done: he was being followed by a thing, sometimes a stranger, sometimes a relative, but now he has passed it onto Jay. Now, she will be followed until she sleeps with someone else. If she’s found and killed they will come for him. (Hugh's reasoning that he chose Jay because she’s young and pretty and won't have trouble sleeping with someone is quite the double-edged sword. Yes, it’s wonderful when someone compliments your physical magnetism, but many would rather it didn’t come with the side-effect of being chased by psychos.)

From here, the film comes into a class of its own. The premise is fantastic: because anyone can be the stalker the viewer is apprehensive the whole time. With Jay in the foreground you’re always on tenterhooks as to what’s going on in the background: are those people moving towards Jay or are they just passing her? The score by Disasterpeace is an eerie exercise in tension building. Known more for his work on video games, the electronic compositions infect the frame with the same terror the stalkers do.

What’s so rich about Mitchell’s film is it demands re-watching. Instead of the camera shepherding you through clues, it points you in different directions so you miss what’s there. Photographs on the wall are significant; things at the back of the frame are vital: the film rewards the keen-eye observer, the passenger prepared to check the blind spots of Mitchell our unreliable driver. It seems rich in symbolism too: water is a recurring motif. Why? That swimming pool scene made me think of the birthing imagery of Gravity. Is the water an evocation of the womb, a vessel of innocence, where the threats of existence can’t get to you?

Ghost Stories was originally a play that debuted in Liverpool in 2010, before becoming a West End smash. I remember the posters all over the Underground advertising it as a frightening ordeal. My mate Jim had seen it and recommended it as original and inventive. In terms of theatre-land it definitely is. Given horror is such a high-grossing genre, it’s a surprise West End producers have ignored it for so long. Last year we took our students to see Women In Black, a show that’s been running for years – up until Ghost Stories it didn’t have any competition.

West End poster.

With the success of the play, creators Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson are bidding to scare a wider audience through a film adaptation. Both men have worked within the medium: Dyson co-writing The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse and Nyman featuring in Kick Ass 2 and The Commuter. Having more of a budget behind them, they have enlisted a stellar cast of comedy royalty from child Prince Alex Lawther (The End of the Fucking World) to King of comedy Paul Whitehouse. Even though Martin Freeman from The Office also features, this isn’t a comedy film. There are laughs, but not many. What it proves is great comic actors are able to turn their face to drama, something that can't always be said for dramatic actors and comedy.

Andy Nyman stars as Professor Phillip Goodman, who from an early montage we learn had a troubled childhood. His father, a religious figure, didn’t take well to his daughter's relationship with an Asian lad, so much so he disowned her. In seeing faith’s dark side, Goodman looks for reason in the rational, devoting his life’s work to debunking the supernatural. As well as an academic, he enjoys a TV career outing psychics. Like Arthur Kipps in The Woman in Black and the unnamed protagonist of H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, Goodman is a staunch skeptic – like them he’s about to question everything he thought he knew.

Most horror stories have a cynical protaganist.

The cause of Goodman’s descent (ascent?) into the supernatural is because a respected paranormal investigator has gone over to the dark side. This debunker calls Goodman to his caravan to challenge his arrogance, offering him three stories that will make him change his mind. Three inexplicable tales that can’t be explained away through logic or science. Just as Kipps and the unnamed of Red Room should never have opened the door on their house of horrors, Goodman’s disbelief leads him in too.

The first story is about what a night watchman saw on his late shift. Played by Paul Whitehouse, Tony Matthews tells Goodman his story. It was late at night. A radio phone-in was on. Nothing was to be heard. Nothing was to be seen. The place still gave Tony the chills. Previously, it was a psychiatric unit housing disturbed patients. It disturbs Tony too. Something doesn’t feel right about the place. This sense of unease is vindicated when one night strange things happen. The lights go out. The radio jumps in and out of frequency, eventually settling on haywire FM. A sound outside is sounded. Investigating, Tony stumbles through a corridor of mazes like a tortured rat. What he sees deeply affects him: his eyes come to resemble tunnels, embracing only the eternal darkness of that night.

The second story involves Lawther’s character taking his parents car illegally for a drive. His breakdown in the woods leads to his existential breakdown. Lawther is fantastic here demonstrating the outré behaviour that has seen him cast in Black Mirror and Howard’s End. The final story has Freeman’s country-yuppie character tell the story of his wife’s pregnancy. Complications arise and the outcome is chilling. Enlisting Freeman is a coup: as a recognisable face in America, he may ensure Stories becomes a cult success there.

All of the stories are interesting and compelling, but for me the joy of this film is in its structure. Both Dyson and Nyman were on the Comedians’ Comedian Podcast recently discussing the film. The pair talked about how comedy and horror resemble one another: both demand a physical response from an audience; both have the set-up, punch-line mechanism – in the case of horror, it’s the build up to the scare and the subsequent jump from the audience. For me, the ending is like an Edinburgh hour of comedy in that it has multiple callbacks to earlier moments. Every viewer will understand the ending, but some viewers will appreciate it even more if they’ve been paying close attention.

Aptly given the horror trope of the skeptic becoming a believer, I too am following that journey: whereas before I would laugh off the genre as ridiculous and stupid, I’m now starting to see things differently; I’m coming to recognise how the cranks and oddballs- associate fans of the genre- were right along. Like the protagonists of all horror stories, I’ve opened the door to the supernatural, walked amongst it and accepted I was wrong. I can no longer hand on heart debunk horror, instead I must atone for my sin and give it the attention it deserves. With that in mind bloggers, what three horror films would you send me off to investigate to complete my conversion to this strange, brilliant world? 

It Follows is available on Netflix and Ghost Stories is out in cinemas.