The Haunted Airman

What an awful movie!! I could barely manage to watch it for the hour it lasted — any longer and it would've been off.

Low-budget I can handle. Weak supporting performances, poor special effects, bad editing… OK, fine. But there is no way to get past a film that is painstakingly slow, boring, and completely lacking a plot (or even an explanation)! Nothing happened! I watched the whole thing and still couldn't really say what it was about. Basically it's a guy who's scared of the shadows. Is he crazy? Why is he in a mental hospital? Is he imagining the spiders and the moving shadows? Who knows — or, more importantly, who cares? Sorry, but a slightly moving shadow on the floor in the middle of the night means nothing, especially when the curtains are open; it's probably just a branch moving outside the window.

Robert Pattinson is attractive as ever and turns in a pretty good performance, but there was no way he could salvage this piece of crap.

My response in a nutshell: yeah, it was only an hour lost…but I can think of so many better and more interesting things I could have done in that hour. Like, the dishes.

As a fan of the late prolific Dennis Wheatley who found "The Haunting of Toby Jugg" to be one of his most gripping thrillers, I was confused to find that this tedious mess was supposed to be inspired by that work. What there is of plot is undercut by uncertainty whether Jugg, from whose POV the story is seen, is a reliable narrator or a nutcase. Playing Jugg, Robert Pattinson mostly gives the perfect Goth fashion model note of cool emotionlessness, which presumably serves him well in the hunky teen vampire stories to which he owes his fame. For this story I would have preferred an actor.

Just for fun, the script includes a bit of interracial flirting which is perfectly appropriate to the 21st Century and perfectly inappropriate to World War II, during which the story is set. Casting a black woman as nurse in a British countryside rest home was inane altogether considering the era.

Don't waste your time. Read the book if you can find it.

A disabled and traumatised WW2 airman is sent to a convalescent home in Wales, where his mental health gradually degenerates as a result of disturbing hallucinations, and growing suspicions that the doctor in charge may not be as benevolent as he at first seems.

Though billed as being based on The Dennis Wheatley story 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg', the relationship is a highly tenuous one. Unlike the book, this is a psychological drama with no hint of the supernatural, and while the technical quality of the filming is very good, it is very, very slow-paced and, at the end, downright confusing. I can only guess that the film's makers were trying to emulate the ambiguous nature of 'The Turn of the Screw', but this is not in the same class at all.

If you liked the book, I can't recommend it. As a psychological chiller it certainly has some unsettling moments, but on the whole it is far too slow and uninvolving.

In the World War II, the airman Toby Jugg (Robert Pattinson) is hit in the spine during an airborne attack and he becomes paraplegic. His aunt- in-law Julia Jugg (Rachael Stirling) is his only relative and sends him to rest in a clinic in the countryside. Toby is in love with Julia and writes several letters to her but she does not respond. Toby is haunted by shadows and bugs and Dr. Hal Burns (Julian Sands), who is responsible for his treatment, complains that Toby does not open his feelings to him.

One day, one intern goes to the town and brings a letter from Julia to Toby, and he finds that Dr. Burns is hiding his correspondence. When Julia is informed, she comes to the clinic to stay with Toby that seems to be mentally ill. One night, Dr. Burns gives a razor to Toby and tells him to do the right thing, trying to induce him to commit suicide. But late night Toby discovers the secret of Julia and Hal.

"The Haunted Airman" is a tale of paranoia, with a confused story, melancholic but beautiful cinematography with blue filter and great performance of Robert Pattinson. I was expecting a horror movie and not a drama, but anyway the director and screenplay writer Chris Durlacher completely fails since he never develops the character of Julian Sands. Does he fall in love with Julia reading the correspondence between Toby and she? Is he trying to dope and kill Toby since Julia is still loyal to him and he wants to get rid off Toby to be with Julia? The pace is also very slow, but helps to make the creepy climate of the story. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

Paralysed during a bombing run over an enemy city, Toby Jugg is sent to a remote recovery centre run by Dr Hal Burns to rehabilitate himself mentally as well as receiving physical therapy from Sister Grant. Jugg does want to be here, he wants to be home with his love, Julia, but the gates are locked and she isn't even writing to him. While Burns continues to offer him treatment, Jugg starts to believe that all is not as it seems.

I'm all for a good ghost story because, although I do scare quite easily, the reason I tend to avoid horror movies is the gore they provide in place of genuine chills. Screened as part of BBC4's season of ghost stories, I did hope for more from The haunted Airman – more than modern "scary" movies but also more than it actually managed to deliver. Most of the problems belong in the delivery of what does seem like it could have been a very interesting story, with plenty of layering and material there to work with. Unfortunately writer/director Durlacher doesn't really seem to know what to do with it.

Is he playing out a character story on a foundation of eerie uncertainty or is it something else? It is hard to say as the film doesn't seem to settle on the strengths very often and funnily the character aspect is something that seems to happen despite Durlacher, not because of him. While he stumbles over this, he also delivers flat and obvious moments in the mistaken belief that they are creepy. At their best these do work but even then they are pretty clichéd and obvious; at their worst they smack of a total lack of imagination with easy tricks that don't have the desired effect.

The acting doesn't help, although again I suspect the performances are hurt by Durlacher not having a grip on everything. Pattinson is roundly poor and I found his performance to be part of undoing the potential in the character stuff. The dread Sands just looms around the place unsure of what he is doing but trying to have a mysterious twinkle in his eyes just in case it is important. Stirling, Lloyd and others end up hanging around the scenes with the purposeful presence of extras.

Overall then an average film at best. The story seems to offer potential but the delivery lacks focus and appears to have been constructed scene by scene, with only the aims of the here and now being considered. It felt like this was also part of the techniques used being obvious and ineffective in pulling the viewer into the film. Not awful, just really quite pointless and uninspiring.