After reading Sarah Monette's wonderful collection The Bone Key (about which I will hopefully write something more or less coherent in the future), that does some great things to/with the M.R. James model of ghost story, I had to find an adequate follow-up. Should I read James' stories again? Already did it this year. So I settled on a BBC "Ghost Story for Christmas" adaptation of one of his stories.
I'm always surprised and delighted how minimalist and concentrated these (short) TV dramas look to the modern eye: There's no slack, no useless secondary plots, no shocks just to keep the story interesting. Instead, one finds a knowledge of the usage of landscape, of short, but sharp moments of characterization, of horror that increases from feelings of uneasiness to dread. Of course some of these virtues can be explained by the low budget of TV movies - there just wasn't enough money for effects or action, but they are virtues all the same.
An e-text of the story can be found here.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
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