An English Haunting (2019)
The second Dark Temple/Charlie Steeds film I’ve watched in two days and this is equally successful as a creepy gothic ghost story as A Werewolf In England was as a rollicking horror comedy.
The film’s only real shortcoming is a couple of distracting lapses of superficial ‘logic’ – is a crumbling, damp and decrepit attic room the most likely place to house a seriously sick old man when there are perfectly adequate bedrooms to spare in the empty mansion, and why do we never see any of the characters (especially the sympathetic grandson) tending the patient (or even checking if he’s alive) at any time? Also, how come the nurse who was freaked out by what she saw still kept lurking around the grounds after running away? These quibbles aside, An English Haunting is another fine example of what can be achieved by skilled and resourceful independent film makers.
Made with style and flair, the excellent location work and cinematography, a brilliantly atmospheric score and sound design along with authentic 1960s period detail and impressively gruesome make up effects all help to bring out the best of a multi-layered script which seems to haven taken some inspiration from the works of such literary masters of the form as M.R.James, William Hope Hodgson and Arthur Machen.
The ‘less-is-more’ approach is cannily exploited in a scene where the protagonist is watching a filmed record of something atrocious but the audience is not allowed to witness the images he is contemplating – instead, it is his horrified reaction which leads us to conjure up in our own minds the horrors being projected. Later we do see the footage and pretty harrowing it is.
Despite being described by some as a ‘slow burner’, this is still a ‘busy’ film and the initial air of unease quite quickly turns into tension, intrigue and outright horror, gathering a dramatic pace that builds to the inevitable climatic confrontation with the otherwordly threat and the – not unexpected – ‘twist ending’. The incongruity of dreamy 1960 pop ballad ‘Cheaters Never Win’ playing over the horrific implications of the very last scene adds a final punch.