It may have more twists than a Chubby Checker convention, but to use the title of another track by the artist formerly known as Ernest Evans, there’s a whole lot of shaking going on in Ghost Stories by writers and directors Jeremy Dyson (League of Gentlemen) and Andy Nyman (Derren Brown’s long-term collaborator) which as the poster quite rightfully boasts is the “best British horror for years”.

Based upon their 2010 stage play of the same name, existential terror is the elephant in the room confronted by supernatural debunker Professor Phillip Goodman (Nyman) whose meeting with his lifelong hero Charles Cameron, a paranormal investigator who made his name in a series of popular documentaries in the 70s, leads him to investigate three unexplained mysteries which challenge his views on the afterlife.

With a cast including Paul Whitehouse and Martin Freeman, you’d expect laughter of the Simon Pegg variety à la Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. And though there are titters, they are few and far between. For intrigue and mystery, character and depth, and things that go bump in the night which make you shout jings and then jump with fright are very much to the fore in what is an intricately plotted and gripping screenplay. And Whitehouse is surprisingly impressive as the grieving husband Tony Matthews haunted by a girl-like ghost in a derelict psychiatric unit.

“Things are not as they seem,” says the terminally ill Cameron. And as the snappily edited hour and a half draws to a speedy and WTF conclusion, the entire premise of the film (a documentary by Goodman to expose psychics as fraudsters and show that science trumps the supernatural) is turned on its head and then some. To say more of which would be, as they, a spoiler. And the final shot by cinematography Ole Bratt Birkeland, complimented by a nerve-jangling score by Haim Frank Ilfman, is the cherry on the icing on the supernatural cake.

Directors Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Writers: Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Stars: Andy Nyman, Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse
Peter Callaghan
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