Urban Ghost Story

When urban ghost story is mentioned stuff like Candyman etc. spring to mind so I was perplexed when I saw this little gem from Scotland recently.

The content and atmosphere of the film does not adhere to the title whatsoever. You would be expecting Snoop Dog and Dr Dre driving around in cadillacs killing vampires. But no, instead a gritty Ken Loach style drama set in lovely Glasgow! I was very impressed overall by this effort, although the spiritualist and paranormal team from the university seemed a bit over the top with the more realistic view elsewhere. Otherwise it was neatly paced with a few creepy moments and a very moving score. I would recommend this film to any film watcher and not just paranormal junkies!

This film manages to hold the attention well and is genuinely disturbing and frightening at times as well. Good performances from the cast and good direction. Obviously, the budget was pretty low but they make good use of it. One of the well-performed medium-sized roles is played by an actress who ended up doing truly astonishingly great work in The Office as an irritating and self-obsessed co-worker of Tim's. Great to see actors careers progressing especially when so well-deserved. Perhaps Urban Ghost Story did suffer slightly from a somewhat bland title. Jason Connery inhabits the role well. It did achieve a theatrical release in the UK though not of immense proportions.

In all honesty I bought the movie just because I heard that Billy Boyd was in it and I am a huge Billy Boyd and Lord Of The Rings Fan. But when I saw the movie I was amazed, it was so good, scary suspenseful and very well done. The story was well constructed and the editing was amazing. Towards the end of the movie the editing all but makes the movie one of the best I have ever seen. While Billy's part was small it was very well done, I found myself actually distesting him for the first time. He is so lovable in LOTR that when you see him in a different role you are amazed that he could play someone evil. This is the first Scottish film that I have seen, and if they are all this good I want to find as many as I possibly can and spend as much money as possible just so I can see all of these good missed movies. I am Irish and I am very proud to say that I come from somewhere near Scotland, they produce good movies and even better actors. If you can you should get a hold of this movie and see it.

Finding any work with Billy Boyd here in the US is tough so finding something where Billy is credited as 'loan shark' told me he wouldn't be in it much - and he was only in two scenes. However, the story itself was absorbing, though slow or repetitive in a couple of places. There was a good amount of tension building to keep me interested. While I am not familiar with who's who in the Scottish acting world, I thought there were strong performances by Heather Ann Foster, Stephanie Buttle and Nicola Stapleton, as well as a fair turn for Jason Connery. I was quite astonished by Billy's foul mouthed character - a loan shark that has a stutter that comes out when he particularly angry. I thought he played the part well. He certainly startled me with his performance - so much anger.

Generally, I don't go in for these kind of movies and it was curiosity of Billy's previous work that got my attention. But it was the story that kept me watching.

Billy Boyd is the sexiest Glaswegian thug ever, I want to have his little ned babies. He will beat me and I will drink all the time and the children will steal cars and start smoking when they are seven, we will be the perfect family. I will stick by him even through his years in prison and his numerous bits of stuff on the side. This is my dream.

Jason Connery is also not bad looking, even funny German scientist dude was kinda cute. The movie was also quite good, well worth the £4.99 I paid that's for damn sure. Take a couple of characters from Trainspotting and stick them into a mix of Sixth Sense and Poltergeist. Now ramp down your expectations to British ITV movie level and you're there. A lot better than I would have expected.