Try not to let these three eerie teasers get under your skin.
Just in time for Halloween, Lionsgate Films UK is dropping three creepy teasers to set the mood for the most macabre night of the year. Their upcoming film, Ghost Stories, won’t hit theaters until 2018, but it’s never too early to win over horror fans with promises of sinister cinematic delights.
Ghost Stories is the film adaptation of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s successful stage show of the same name. The film tells the story of a supernatural skeptic who finds himself drawn into a series of uncanny encounters that challenge his beliefs. Dyson and Nyman, who wrote the original stage production, also co-wrote and co-directed the film — Nyman also stars in the movie. The cast includes Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), Alex Lawther (The End Of The F***ing World), Jill Halfpenny (Humans), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (The Last Panthers), and Nicholas Burns (Marley’s Ghosts).
As a special holiday treat, Lionsgate Films UK decided to drop three Ghost Stories teasers on us. Take a look below.
Like any other film genre, horror comes in all kinds of varieties. If you’re in the camp that prefers moody, atmospheric, slow-burn scares then this first teaser is promising. Notice the unsettling way the camera slowly encroaches on each shot like a predator stalking its prey. There are plenty of dimly lit shots and it’s tough not to get spooked by the sound of deep breaths, echoing laughter, and creaking doors. We may have seen these horror tropes a hundred times before, but filmmakers keep returning to them because they work.
The second teaser is more chilling than the first. As someone who spends 99% of their time in a large city, few things are as distressing to me as getting stuck by myself on some isolated country road. The second teaser brilliantly captures that ah f*** moment when the driver realizes something is pursuing him.
The third teaser is my least favorite, but it definitely packs the biggest punch. This teaser unfolds with a twitchy, erratic editing style with lots of frantic cutting. And images of a bucolic countryside are interrupted by a final jump cut to a hideous screaming ghoul.
Ghost Stories doesn’t have to scare me to win me over; I love horror movies but I’m past the point where they can spook me. Antagonists like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers are unrelenting killing machines, and as characters, they’re about as interesting as the shark in Jaws. They scare us because they tap into our primal fears of being hunted. To get under my skin a movie must work on a more cerebral level. The most disturbing thing Ghost Stories can throw at me is showing me how its protagonist’s beliefs slowly deteriorate. For me, there are few things as unsettling as watching someone losing their grip on reality.
These three teasers don’t offer enough details about Ghost Stories to get me excited about the movie. They did, however, serve up just enough of an atmospheric appetizer to pique my interest. I won’t place Ghost Stories on my must-watch list, but I will be looking out for any new details about the film as we get closer to its release.
Here is Ghost Stories synopsis:
Phillip Goodman, professor of psychology, arch-skeptic, the one-man ‘belief buster’ – has his rationality tested to the hilt when he receives a letter apparently from beyond the grave. His mentor Charles Cameron, the ‘original’ TV parapsychologist went missing fifteen years before, presumed dead and yet now he writes to Goodman saying that the pair must meet. Cameron, it seems, is still very much alive. And he needs Goodman to find a rational explanation for three stories that have shaken Cameron to his core. As Goodman investigates, he meets three haunted people, each with a tale more frightening, uncanny and inexplicable than the last.