Urban Ghost Story
                         (UK Region 2 DVD)
                                     (1998)
                                     review by Suspiriorum

Urban Ghost Story was made in 1998 by Chris Jones & Genevieve Jolliffe, the authors of "The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook", but had to wait until 2001 for its’ UK release. The pair had made two films before, both directed by Jones. For this film though, and with a slightly larger budget, Jolliffe made her directorial debut. There have been many great directorial debuts made in the genre, from Black Sunday, Night of the Living Dead & The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, to Cronos & Tesis. And although Urban Ghost Story can’t really compare to any of those, it’s still a respectable first film. The narrative concerns 12 year-old Lizzie who is involved in an ecstasy-fuelled car crash in which her friend died, & who was herself dead for three minutes. Following this, strange occurrences start to happen in the family flat in a run down Glasgow tower block, where Lizzie lives with her mother & younger brother.

I’ll start with the good stuff by saying that the poltergeist scenes are superb. Completely believable, they carry a wholly unnerving sense of terror, achieved mostly by subtly convincing means. Instead of some grand gothic mansion, they occur in a modern, cramped flat that is totally recognisable as the home of a real family (despite being filmed entirely on set). It’s also left pleasingly ambiguous as to exactly what is causing the disturbances. During the séance scene, every hair on my body was standing on end, & any film which can create that kind of a reaction need little further recommendation.

So what’s the problem then? Why only three skulls? Well, that’s down to the rest of the film. You see, the ghost is only one element in the film, which also takes in suicide, survivor guilt, inner city depravation, drug abuse, the pressures of being a single mother, media exploitation, debt, a love story & more. It’s far too much to cram into a mere 84 minutes, meaning that none of them are explored enough, & the overall film ends up feeling cluttered, with few elements mixing with each other satisfactorily. It occasionally feels as though you’re watching two or three different films intercut with each other, & the movie would have been stronger had it focused on just a few of these elements. And this is with two elements of the haunting (mysteriously appearing water & a moving purse) edited out.

All of this makes the film sound like a dull, gritty drama, but it’s actually surprisingly stylishly put together. In fact, it might just be rather too stylish for it’s own good. There’s a real fondness for time-lapse & slo-mo shots, which director Jolliffe informs us in her commentary is to show that Lizzie’s world moves both quickly & slowly. Sadly, it just comes off as superficial flash, not delving deep enough beneath the surface. At the climax, there’s a pretty impressive montage sequence, but the opera extract on the soundtrack pushes it too far. The music seems to have been needlessly thrown on almost as an afterthought serving no real purpose but emptily chasing effect. The thing that occurs immediately after this sequence struck me as being rather ham-fisted, & made me want to throw things at the screen – which is not a good way to leave the audience.With its’ modern, realistic approach to a young suburban girl & her mother tormented by horrors, this seems to want to be the British answer to The Exorcist. Certainly Rupert Gregson-Williams’ temp-track plagued contemporary tinged score frequently sounds like a mix of Tubular Bells & Screams’ solo voice, when it’s not reworking Carl Orffs’ Musica Poetica – as heard in Badlands (or, as producer Chris Jones puts it in his commentary, "the music from True Romance"). But it can’t hope to survive the comparisons it makes – & the rather familiar elements include the dream scan of Elm St., and the group of scientific bods (including Andreas Wisniewski, familiar from The Living Daylights & Die Hard) and their equipment, & the psychics inevitably calling Poltergeist to mind. Given the nature of the film, the latter is a perhaps-inevitable comparison. There is a nice moment when the scientists refuse to stay when the psychics arrive.

Heather Ann Foster delivers a remarkably strong performance as Lizzie, although the ambiguity of whether she is hoaxing it does undercut our empathy for the character slightly. There’s also Jason Connery as a journalist who appears to believe in the ghost whilst just playing along for the story, but he is too nice & kindly to be entirely convincing given some of his actions. Stephanie Buttle does well as the mother, although the performance is perhaps not quite up to the standards of the likes of Ellen Bursten or JoBeth Williams. Future hobbit Billy Boyd also crops up as a hardnut debt collector. Non Scots may have a hard time understanding the accents at points, but the problem isn’t too bad.

For all its numerous flaws, there is much to recommend Urban Ghost Story, including an impressively staged car crash & a jaw-dropping moment in a Chemists shop. It’s pretty intelligent, & engages both brain & heart, even though it occasionally succumbs to petty moralising (Do drugs and you’ll go to hell!!). It’s no classic, but if you’re after something a bit different, Urban Ghost Story is worth investigating.

The UK DVD is superb stuff, with a fine picture quality & excellent Dolby 5.1 track that generates the chills very well. In addition, there are two commentary tracks – one with the director & DoP, the other with the producer & editor. There’s a bit of repetition, but everyone seems really impressed with what they managed to achieve on such a small budget in such a short shoot. In addition, there’s an OK 15 minute making of, which contains spoilers, does repeat things from the commentaries & is perhaps a little too self-congratulatory, a reel of outtakes introduced by producer/co-writer Chris Jones, & Rupert Gregson-Williams score set to a series of still & promo shots. After watching this DVD alone in the flat one dark night (as opposed to all those light nights), I was actually really creeped out when I went to bed, but mostly due to the best extra. This is a new documentary (around 20 mins) about the famous Enfield poltergeist case, which inspired the film when Jones saw a program about it. I also saw that program (or at least a similar one, & it really frightened me at the time), but this is an all-new one for this DVD. It includes still shots of activity, interviews with the investigator, & even excerpts from the supremely creepy tapes in which he interviews the ghost, who tells how he died.