Is it possible for anyone to reinvent
the haunted house story? No. Is it
possible to learn from the genre and have some fun anyway? Definitely. Latest UK horror film Blackwood tries to do
just that with a tongue-in-cheek rural ghost story with a few modern twists.
The movie lifts most of its opening
scenes directly from The Shining. It begins with Ben Marshall (Ed Stoppard) moving his wife Rachael (Sophia Myles) and son Harry (Isaac Andrews) into a big spooky house
called Blackwood so that he can continue his career as a University history
professor. The house is big enough for the son to run round exploring and
continually getting lost in the nearby woods, where he meets Jack (Russell Tovey) a creepy neighbor who
Ben immediately distrusts.
It is revealed that Ben is returning to
work after an emotional breakdown and that he has an obsessive mind, which soon
turns to the previous occupant of the house that has left mysterious paintings
behind. After a few nights in the house
Ben begins to have visions involving his son and the neighbor Jack. This leads him to turn his historical,
obsessive mind to finding out what happened in the house and local area and
what implications it might have for his family.
Like all horror films, there is a lot of
exposition and backstory to set up in order to pay off with scares later, which
gives the film a slow beginning (and felt a bit like a Goosebumps
horror novel for a while). But after
the characters, the locations and some key features of the haunted house are in
place it soon becomes compelling and begins to twist some of the horror
archetypes.
One of the more interesting developments
in modern ghost stories is the necessary evolution of technology. Now due to the prevalence of iPhones
characters are never alone in the dark; similarly with search engines, haunted
houses can be Googled instead of read about in dusty old books. There are also some nice touches that place
the action overtly in 21st century Britain: Ben makes BBC 4 style documentaries about
history that his son constantly watches, the pub has a Polish bar maid,
everyone rolls their own cigarettes…
If there were one scene that I would cut
it would be the stereotypical lecturer-giving-an-inspiring-lecture scene that
shoehorns in something about his character that, having lecturing experience
myself, grates on me and has become such a Hollywood cliché.
Otherwise though Blackwood is a very fun, spooky ghost story with some great UK
talent - especially Russell Tovey as a maniac, Paul Kaye as a creepy priest and Sophia Myles as the jaded
housewife.
I would also recommend checking out
Tovey in the previous short film ROAR which was,
like Blackwood, was directed by Adam
Wimpenny and written by J.S. Hill…
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