Adapted from a play by co-director Jeremy Dyson and starring co-director Andy Nyman as a psychic debunker, Ghost Stories creeps up on the viewer, building towards a harrowing final 20 minutes or so. The three ghost stories investigated by Nyman's rigid, unsympathetic Professor Goodman have changed their participants irrevocably, and not necessarily for the better. Goodman tries to remain unchanged as weirdness increases in his own life.
Some viewers (like me!) will be initially put off by the characterization of a psychic investigator as a bad guy, even as he exposes a fraud early in the movie in pretty much exactly the way that longtime debunker James Randi did. Stick with it, though. What seems like a general observation on the part of the movie may turn out to be something very much else.
I'd love to see how this play was originally staged. The movie has done such a terrific job of 'opening it up' that I'd be hard-pressed to cite any moments in which it seems like an adaptation of a stage play. Recommended.
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