The Ghoul

Best pay close attention here, as not all is as it seems.

Twisty movies can be god fun, but as is the case with "The Ghoul", they can be quite unsettling. What starts out as a standard police drama slowly melts into an endless, dark, psychological journey, where everything is gradually turned upside down.

Not an easy watch, this: a dreamy, hallucinatory, moebius strip thriller with an agonizing performance from the spiralling lead (the excellent Tom Meeton). Filmed in dark, bleak confines, "The Ghoul" works, not inspite of it's micro budget, but because of it - relying on claustrophobic interaction from the players.

Fans of linear cinema need not apply, but those wishing for a jarring, thought-provoking experience will be rewarded.

Just watched a bizarre mind bending thriller "The Ghoul", that is not a horror film, although by the title, you might think so. This movie is just as much reality in the non linear plot, as it is just a fantasy going on in the lead character's mind. Don't expect me to explain it, one reason, many have compared it to David Lynch's "The Lost Highway", which I don't agree. I was able to follow it, if that is possible, by figuring what is really going on, and what is just a figment of the lead character's mind. That's not easy, but I like the very bizarre twists and turns the movie takes, to only end up where it started, but with many questions answered. You have to stay with it, and pay very close attention to the script as it moves along. I don't know if I would recommend it, it's like putting together a big puzzle, with a few pieces missing, that you eventually find laying on the floor somewhere.

A soaring triumph of the cinematic imagination, conspicuously gifted first time feature director, Gareth Tunley's audaciously inventive, compellingly strange, reality-warping psychodrama,'The Ghoul' is a divinely disturbing, almost wholly interior Detective story that teasingly opens up a perception tweaking wormhole of cans, and, perhaps, if fellow agitators, Ken Russell or Donald Cammell had turned their mischievous Mise-en-scène to creating a more psychotronically-inclined Scandi-Noir it just might resemble something like 'The Ghoul'.

Both text, earnest performances, and filmmaking are all of an exemplary standard, and the dizzyingly off-kilter journey into Chris's (Tom Meeten) increasingly metaphysical madness happily proves to be a rewardingly convoluted one! Tunley's theologically trippy, deliriously circuitous, starkly intimate nightmare is moodily set to a spare, yet immersive score by composer, Waen Shepherd. Fans of 'Enemy' (2013), 'Predestination' (2014), and the similarly tweaked, 'The Rambler' (2013) are sure to find The Ghoul's assured transport into a palpably tormented mind scape not only intriguing, but one that provided a rewardingly oblique conclusion. I went into 'The Ghoul' not knowing quite what to expect from it, which ultimately made this uniquely inward experience that much more thrilling.

Seems to me the most frequent complaint about this film is that it is 'slow and boring' and the most positive that it is like Mulholland Drive. The latter comparison, is falsely made, I guess, because the film is complicated and the former remark simply because this tends to be the fallback option if there are not enough explosions. If anything the film moves too fast for its own good. The dialogue is excellent, full of provocative thoughts and human insights but a lot is expected of the viewer and it is easy to get left behind. The therapy sessions should be an opportunity for things to slow down and for us to get our bearings and sort out what is real or not to us and perhaps more pertinently what is real or not to the characters. But nothing is as simple as it appears here and even the sessions seem to take us into even darker areas. Excellent, but not the easiest film to follow because it does not set out a simple path. For those for whom that sounds 'boring', I guess will find it boring. Not sure what that proves though.

Dark and confusing story dives into the multidimensional territory of time loops; peppered with a bit of Fight Club & a dash of Taxi Driver. Don't let the title fool you, certainly not horror.

I had never heard of this film before and it was rated average-like so I watched it at home & I can't say it was time wasted (I like movies) but I can't sing its praises either. At one point midway through I was so bored that I did consider turning it off but I knew the ending had something in store that, even if not amazing, I felt I should stay on for.

The ending will disorient viewers, including myself, and it's quite good. Unfortunately for the ending, the bulk of the rest of the story leading up to it borders on slow torture. A lot of films are great until the final act ruins them; this one is the opposite, with a climax that would have done better attached to a different project.

A for effort. 4/10 for my tastes.