The Ghoul (2017)

Warning: this is another one of those films you can’t talk about at all without invoking at least a minor degree of spoilers!

Either, Chris (Tom Meeten) is a detective going undercover as a patient to acquire information about a murder from a psychotherapist, or he is the new patient of said psychotherapist who daydreams about being a detective. Either Chris is shadowing people during a murder investigation, or he is stalking them. Either Chris is the lover of Kathleen (Alice Lowe), or he has had an unspoken crush more than bordering on obsession on his best friend’s girlfriend Kathleen for years. Perhaps Chris is threatened by a fiendish magic(k)al conspiracy, or he starts to believe in the delusions of a very ill guy who goes to the same therapist

How’s that for a short outline of what Gareth Tunley’s, whom I knew more as an actor – particular in the films of Ben Wheatley who also co-produces here - than a director before, horror film (or is it?) The Ghoul is all about? It’s a film whose thoughts about identity and reality seem informed by writers like Philip K. Dick as approached by way of British magical traditions, with an idea of the city and the way people move through it that seems influenced by psychogeography. In other words, it isn’t exactly your straightforward horror film nor is it the sort of mind-fuck film that really needs to get its twist out. Surprisingly enough, given the film’s ambiguous tone, its ending is concrete, even precise, and provides the audience with a rather clear answer to the question what has been going on throughout the film while also being so well constructed the clear answer never feels too clear. It does of course help that the film’s explanation isn’t exactly a logical one, just one that fits and makes sense inside of the rules it has established throughout its running time.

As a director, Tunley is very adept at using comparatively simple (this is certainly made on a low budget) visual techniques to disquiet the viewer, setting his film in a London that is a palpable, real place, yet one whose solidity can shift and drift away at a moment’s notice. Chris’s movements through the city at times gives the subtle impression of everything around him being part of a ritual he – and with him the viewer – can’t quite comprehend.

In the beginning, while you are trying to understand the connection between the two realities of Chris The Ghoul shows, the film is certainly confusing, but as a whole, its comes about its strange (well, Weird) mood and its part-time trippiness through precision rather than vagueness. There’s ambiguity, but it is a very consciously constructed one, if that makes any sense.

Tom Meeten’s performance is particularly effective, really projecting the sadness and the pain of the unhappy version of Chris in a subtle portrayal of mental illness that suggests an actual understanding of the character as a human being instead of a doll stitched out of bits of symptoms, and not laying it on too thick with the “normality” of the other Chris. This aspect of the film is particularly well written, too, with compassion and insight and without feeling the night for pathetic gestures.


But then, the whole of The Ghoul is rather well written (also by Tunley), full of intelligent little touches, foreshadowing that actually works (and isn’t quite foreshadowing inside the logic of what’s going on here, but I digress into more spoilers), and the sort of unhurried pacing that might look slow but is actually just right.