The Ghoul

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.

This is not a horror film but a complex and dark psychological thriller about a policeman investigating a double murder - or is it all in his imagination? Some reviewers have complained that it is boring but I found it to be a slow yet riveting burn, all the way to it's clever finale. It is well acted & liked the many great shots of London. Certainly not to everybody's taste but to deride this as rubbish is unfair & ignorant.

This is a total mind f__k. Well written, well acted, and keeps you guessing until the end and beyond if you have imagination. Definitely not your run of the mill horror flick. Intensely riveting with it's twists and turns until your mind is following a mobius loop and trying to catch up with the writer.

Sorry folks, its great to do a project like this film but it kind of falls down flat. I believe a good vision of depression or psychosis must begin by showing us the character in a balanced frame of mind. This should help us perceive what they will eventually lose, giving us a greater understanding of their slow/fast decline from reality into somewhat darker territories. Without that a film like this is just an abstract nightmare for a character we have little connection to. As a consequence of this the film feels a little too abstract but without the depth to carry that abstraction. I like the synopsis, it could be a fine film but it needs some work.

Perhaps what would offer this film a better reaction is if it were presented in a different manner. I would do a serious edit, make it into a half hour short and issue it as a piece of art film rather than a feature.

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.