If you haven’t seen it, Ghost Stories is a film from 2017 which you can watch on BBC iplayer. Just the fact that I’m writing about it you can tell that I would highly recommend it but here are some reasons as to why.
First of all, the acting in it is superb! Of course you can never go wrong with Martin Freeman, who plays an amazing obsessive father and later a very unnerving antagonist, and of course Paul Whitehouse, who, instead of being his usual comical character, plays a father plagued by an encounter with a ghost. But I would give most credit to Alex Lawther, who plays an incredible paranoid young adult without playing too much into stereotypes and making the performance unconvincing. And of course the main character played by Andy Nyman, perfectly shows the arc of a man going from a complete paranormal sceptic to a fearful and enlightened believer. All of these actors and their characters merge together perfectly to help create the suspense necessary to the stories told.
Now if you haven’t seen this film beware because to properly tell you about the cliché of this film I will have to spoil the ending.
… ok, I’ll guess that if you’re reading from now you’ve either watched the film or you don’t mind it being spoiled for you.
So many of the old film clichés revolve around well timed jump scares and a sudden twist at the end. However, since film has been going on for a good 100 years and storytelling has been happening pretty much since the beginning of time, it begins to become difficult to come up with new jump scares and decent twists. It’s all well and good that you can come up with a twist but if there’s absolutely no basis for it then it’s completely unbelievable and ruins the film.
Jump scares are difficult not to predict since you’ve got to build up to them otherwise they don’t scare properly, so fair enough that those are predictable. But a common trope in more modern horrors is that they simply build up to scare that doesn’t happen, or build up to scare and have it happen slightly after when it would be expected, so as to momentarily let the audience be calm after expecting a jump scare that doesn’t come. However, when it comes to Ghost Stories, they build up the jump scares and have them happen exactly when you’d expect. And even though you could say “oh but I was expecting that… I knew it was coming” there is still something refreshing about getting scared when you think you’re going to.
Similarly, one of the earliest “horror stories” I’ve ever watched on film was The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari and even the twist in that film is what we now consider to be a cliché. We watch a whole film about Dr Caligari and his somnambulist and at the end it turns out they are all characters in a mad man’s fantasy. This is then very similar to a film like Shutter Island which ends on very much the same premise. But the point it’s these clichés of “it was all a dream!” And “they were dead the whole time!” Became worn out quite quickly and soon became parody, and audiences would moan when it was thrown in pointlessly at the end of films.
Yet, it can be observed that everything in societal culture has a cyclical nature; fashion trends tend to come back every 20 years (although more recently 40), music trends follow the same sort of pattern. There is one pattern I have recognised as having something similar to what I’m seeing in the return of clichéd horror and that’s memes.
Meme culture mostly started off of “me gusta” memes and collectively making fun of something specific like high school musical and Justin Bieber. Eventually memes would get outdated and you would get chastised for using old meme formats. However, overtime some memes would just “not die” or would be used ironically. Out of this ironic use they could sometimes be completely reborn and this is what I think is currently happening with horror. The twists and jump scares were used properly in the early days, then died out and directors were chastised for using them. But now, after these clichés being shunned for years, we are almost glad to see them returned after their ironic use in parodies like the Scary Movie franchise.
In short, after years of clichés being banned in cinema, it’s a refreshing to finally see those clichés because were not used to them anymore, we are used to things being over complicated by modern cinema. So when Ghost stories finishes with the twist of “he’s in a coma and this is a trauma dream” we are quite happy that it’s not something stupid and that’s it wasn’t too predictable. Plus, other things from within the stories such as the characters, the recurring numbers, and the details within the other character’s stories all become tied into the twist within the last 10 minutes of the story. A brilliant film, and a triumphant return for the horror clichés!
Sophias film blog 