Ghost Stories

This old-fashioned horror anthology isn't terrifying or scream-inducing; instead, it's closer in spirit to the moody, clammy, atmospheric English movies of decades past that lovingly inspired it. Nyman and Jeremy Dyson co-wrote and co-directed Ghost Stories based on their hit stage play, and what the movie lacks in that real-life theatrical connection it makes up for in eerie, clever cinematography and editing. The asylum in the first segment consists of pitch-black corridors running off into infinity, but it's far from neat and tidy; it's littered with decades of sinister refuse. The teen boy's room is decorated with occult drawings of demons and monsters, making a simple doorway seem terribly unsettling.

Weirdly, one of the movie's creepiest sequences takes place in an open field in broad daylight. The filmmakers beautifully use the on-screen and the offscreen, the seen and the unseen, sounds and clever cuts to suggest, rather than show, its horrors. Still, anthology horror movies usually have a weak spot, and here it's the wraparound story. But even though savvy horror fans may groan at how things unfold, Ghost Stories is so stylish and so satisfying that it gets by on spirit alone.