Set in London in the 1920s, Rebecca Hall is a famed author and debunker of all things allegedly paranormal. She is visited by Dominic West, a teacher at a boys’ boarding school, who requests she visit the school and investigate the bizarre goings on there. Apparently a boy once died there in mysterious circumstances, and the ghost of the boy has turned up in school photographs, and may have even caused the death of another boy most recently. Hall agrees, and although she initially dismisses things as a childish prank, things escalate to a point where Hall isn’t quite so sure that the place isn’t haunted. Imelda Staunton plays the school’s matron who seems to know more than she’s letting on.
Directed and co-written by cinema debutante Nick Murphy (who comes from a background in British TV), this British ghost story is something in the like a combination of “1408” and “Downton Abbey”. Remarkably, the combination proves entertaining to someone like me who would never watch anything like “Downton Abbey”. I loved the Orson Welles version of “Jane Eyre”, however, so that might’ve helped (West’s character is rather Rochester-esque), and the idea of a ghost story set in a 1920s London boarding school is pretty irresistible to me. A boys’ boarding school seems ripe for all kinds of sinister activity, and this place is definitely the doomiest (a word I just invented) and gloomiest place on Earth, it seems. And that’s before we get to any otherworldly spectres.
This film wasn’t quite horrific enough for me, but it’s still pretty solid. Rebecca Hall, a polarising figure in some circles for gossipy personal issues that are both speculative and irrelevant, is so luminescent here that one wonders whether she’s a ghost herself. Her presence here as a cynic is so cool, calm and collected for the most part that it proves a real asset towards the end. She’s a seriously underrated actress in my view and I have absolutely no idea why she is not a huge star yet. Imelda Staunton, meanwhile, is perfect for her role too, immediately having you worried.
I also didn’t guess the film’s final two twists, though I perhaps should have, and the ending will have you getting into arguments with people, for sure. So Murphy and co-writer Stephen Volk (“Gothic”, “The Guardian”) earn marks for keeping me guessing and thinking throughout. Although mostly set indoors, the film offers some really nice scenery too, when given a chance, some rather creepy, dark tree branches for instance.
OVERALL SUMMARY
If you’re one of the two people who liked “An American Haunting” (I’m not the only one, right?), imagine that movie done as a BBC drama, and you’d come close to what this film is like. I would’ve appreciated less drama and more overt horror, but I liked this film nonetheless.
