★★
Macabre creatures. Murderous Encounters. Four Tales from the bizarre to the blood-curdling.
Classification: 15
Opening with an inventive and entertaining animated sequence teasing the four short films ahead, one could assume Ghost Stories would take on the tone of a campy but thrilling anthology in the style of Tales of the Crypt. Unfortunately, that seems to be the one spurt of creativity is the only one these four filmmakers had in the tank as the majority of this collection is slow, boring, drab and absent of any genuine horror or terror. This the third anthology film that Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, and Anurag Kashyap have collaborated on, the first two being Bombay Talkies and Lust Stories, while those received a more positive reception it would seem the third time's not the charm. Their formula attempts horror this time but each story falls into the same drab, moody atmosphere as dour colour grading makes most of the film just feel like looking at the colour grey. Then each story drags each premise on far too long and ends with a preditacble Twilight Zone reject twist.
The only short that has real value is the third, directed by Dibakar Banerjee which does some interesting visuals and plays upon tropes of the post-apocalypse, zombie outbreaks, and innocence surviving in squalor. However, by this point the audience has to go through two bleak, dragging shorts which mostly just spans the time out to hit the audience with a disturbing image than any real engrossing horror. The third film is the only one that really is able to do both combining imagery and commentary, examining innocence, possible allegories for ethnic cleansing and the savagery that exists within all men. Honestly, the third film had enough meat on the bones to be its own feature as Sukant Goe's performance as the visitor captures great fear and empathy while Gulshan Devaiah as the creature is ferocious, a chilling game of cat and mouse and what can survive in this world.
Ghost Stories would have fared much better if the other three directors had something to say beyond "this is spooky". There is some connective tissue in the visuals with the motif of birds that's never made explicitly clear but each short is able to elicit some form of memorable imagery. Story 2 from Anurag Kashyap while mostly monotonous in its obvious plotting contains some legitimately uncomfortable moments that will make your skin crawl. It doesn't enhance the enjoyment of what's come as it feels like a creative decision to make it more shocking rather than enhance any themes. A lot of Ghost Stories can just feel so obvious that the stories told in an average 45 minutes could seriously be boiled down to ten and there would still be room for filler. Some minor comedy here or there, especially in the fourth film which sees a man speak to his deceased grandmother, undercutting the disturbing reaction from Mrunal Thakur's performance as Avinash Tiwary's character plays it like a studio comedy than a horror film. Mostly it's all the same which for all the power modern anthologies can hold in our current media space such as Black Mirror, Fargo, and True Detective, it's the variety in the stories and characters that makes this format so inviting.
Not close to holding a candle to greater executions, Ghost Stories desperately needed the spirit of the Crypt Keeper to keep it from descending into its own grave. The third short offers some salvation to the audience that goes through the entire two and a half hour runtime but very little of these films keep the audience gripped in dread and suspense.
Director: #KaranJohar, #DibakarBanerjee, #ZoyaAkhtar, #AnuragKashyap
Cast: #SobhitaDhulipala, #MrunalThakur, #AvinashTiwary, #JanhviKapoor, #SurekhaSikri, #RaghuvirYadav, #GulshanDevaiah, #VijayVarma, #PavailGulati
Release Date: December 31st 2019
Available Exclusively on Netflix
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images from the Internet Movie Database, Synopsis from Netflix
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