Spine Chillers

Halloween may be over for another year, but reader beware, you’re still in for a scare if you pick up these three spook-tacularly haunting reads…

Book Review: DARK MATTER
Written by: Michelle Paver
Published by: Orion, 2011
256pages
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With its cream-coloured snowscape cover and black and white photographs intersecting the fictional account within, teen author Michelle Paver’s first adult horror drew my attention because of its unmistakable visual comparison to Kate Mosse’s so-so period chiller The Winter Ghosts (reviewed HERE).

While I would undoubtedly proclaim Paver’s supernatural tale to be the better read, it is more successful as an intense character piece then a truly thrilling ghost story, with the paranormal proceedings played out few and far between and isolation and paranoia posing more of a pertinent problem for the haunted Arctic explorers than any long dead spirit.

Toby the Unfriendly Ghost

Cine Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3
15 – 84mins – 2011
Written by: Christopher B. Landon
Based on characters created by: Oren Peli
Directed by: Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost
Starring: Jessica Tyler Brown, Chloe Csengery, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner, Dustin Ingram, Katie Featherstone, Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland
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[SPOILERS] Ghost? Demon? Poltergeist? Invisible Friend? Fraud? Despite spooling back to the much referenced troubled childhoods of Paranormal Activity sisters Katie (Featherstone) and Kristi (Grayden), this third entry in the supernatural entity series still fails to comprehensively explain what the hell is haunting, taunting and hurting them. Well they have to leave something to play with in the almost guaranteed fourth instalment…

In PA3 we get a peek at the VHS home movies which disappeared from Kristi and husband Dan’s (Boland) basement in the “burglary” at the start of PA2 (reviewed HERE). Rewinding to the September of 1988, we see young Kristi (Tyler Brown) develop a disturbing camaraderie with her “invisible friend” Toby. The little girl starts talking to thin air, waking in the middle of the night and roaming the house to stare for hours at her sleeping mother (Bittner) and stepfather (Nicholas Smith).

To the Manor Dead

Book Review: THE DEAD OF WINTER
Written by: Chris Priestley
Released in: 2010
Published by: Bloomsbury
217pages
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In an attempt to temperate my ravenous consumption of the marvellous “Tales of Terror” series from Cambridge’s own young adult horror author Chris Priestley (click the links for my reviews of Uncle Montague and Black Ship), I decided to jump forward to his latest release; once again a ghost story with a young protagonist, but this time a singular extended story rather than an anthology of quick-fire yarns.

Newly orphaned Michael Vyner is this tale’s diminutive narrator, recalling the “heartbeat hastening” events of the last Christmas, where he was obligated to leave behind the life he knew to spend the holidays in the desolate and shadowy Hawton Mere, an ancient East Anglian abode which is home to his enigmatic and aloof guardian – the sickly Sir Stephen Clarendon – and a solitary woman in white who wanders the snow-covered fens…

The Dead of Winter could quite easily have been reduced to a 20/30 page short story from a “Tales of Terror” compilation, which is not to say it is an agonisingly drawn-out or humdrum affair when spread over a novel’s length, only that a lot of the time is spent accumulating a chilling ambience – shadows in the darkness, knocking behind walls, ghosts in the mist, etcetera – while the plot is never thick or complex. But then this is horror aimed at a teen audience.

Priestley’s descriptive prose is his greatest creative strength – he has great fun with his graphic and evocative imagery and metaphors, conjuring up a truly fearful vibe from the slightest of actions or most sensitive of sentiments. Par exemple:

“As I recoiled in horror, her face shone with a light of pure evil. Her eyes
that had been so bright in life were now white marbles, as if the fire had
licked all colour from them. She was like some spider who had waited for this
moment, and now the moment came…”

While the climatic clarification of the ghoulish goings-on did fall a little short of Uncle Montague’s extreme depravity (a wonderfully creepy faceless boy with just a mouth for shrieking in agony and the supernatural ability to morph into a giant arachno-lizard creature was sadly underused) and the solution to the overriding mystery of how Sir Stephen’s beloved wife died was all too predictable, what did impress me about The Dead of Winter was how well Priestley handled the increasing cast of supporting characters.

Cooks, lawyers, coachmen, servants, guardians, sisters; all play a part – for better or worse – in Michael’s sorrowful secluded stay at Hawton Mere, and none are given short shrift in the narrator’s first-person account. Even if they depart for extended periods of time, their presence is always felt by their absence, most notably Sir Stephen’s lawyer, Tristan Jerwood, who Michael gradually warms to and comes to see as a confidant, missing this new-found friend who must leave on business for long periods at a time. Of course this desire for companionship is only natural when your parent’s have died and you are imprisoned in an alien environment.

This kind of continuity may seem insignificant to some, but it is crucial to producing a consistent and relatable chronicle (particularly as Michael is only a child and – no matter how brave – still dependant on support from his elders), and it impressed me as proof that Priestley – an author who I have become acquainted with as a short story scribe – and his compellingly lurid shocks can translate to longer stories. I fervently await Mr Creecher, which is due for hardback release in October.


In a CR@B Shell: While not as vividly distasteful as the gloriously grotesque Uncle Montague, The Dead of Winter still succeeds as an old fashioned gothic yuletide nightmare in the fashion of Dennis Wheatley and Henry James ghost stories; not least because of Priestley’s slow-building tension and disturbingly macabre ambience.
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Hotel Paranorma

Blu Review: THE BEYOND (E TU VIVAI NEL TERRORE - L'ALDILÀ)
18 – 87mins – 1981
Story by: Dardano Sacchetti
Screenplay by: Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci
Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller, Antione Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Anthony Flees
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Talk about irony: no sooner had I finished ripping Lucio Fulci's 1980 zombie abomination City of the Living Dead a new (hell) hole (you can read my rant HERE), then LoveFilm whisked me the second film in his unholy trinity as if it were a high priority on my rental list (it wasn't). I wasn't much looking forward to diving back into this kooky director's diverse oeuvre *quite* so soon, but for all its thematic similarities to its predecessor, The Beyond is actually a surprisingly steep step up in all regards.

Heroine of the original, Catriona MacColl, returns again (as she does in part three, The House By The Cemetery, also. Yes, that's on my LoveFilm list too!), albeit in a completely unrelated role. Here she plays Liza Merril, a woman who has inherited a long-deserted hotel in Louisiana, completely oblivious to its unholy history: it was built over one of the seven cursed gateways to Hell. Bummer.

Despite numerous supernatural “accidents” (all involving major blood loss, body disfiguring, eye-piercing, and – on more than one occasion – acid burning) and countless ominous warnings from a shuddersome blind woman (Keller) to keep the hell away from the ghostly guest house, Liza is undeterred in her renovation project – until the dead start to walk the Earth.

Of course, yet again, it's all an elaborate excuse to splash the red stuff and feed the director's ocular fetish in ever-more distastefully sickening scenarios, but the smaller character base and simplified linear plot means events feel more cohesive and purposeful to the journey's end rather than incomprehensible abstract diversions from logic as they did in the hopelessly disjointed City.

A black and white prologue set in 1927 revealing the unlocking of the gateway and subsequent mob crucifixion of the painter responsible is wonderfully artistic in a B-movie pastiche sense, working well as a framing device which is counterbalanced by the protagonist's belated arrival in “The Beyond” at the film's futile but open-ended climax; an epically atmospheric swirling mountainous landscape of dead bodies soundtracked by the shrieks of the eternally tortured.

For a film billed as a “zombie horror” it must be noted that the shuffling stiffs don't actually show up en mass until five minutes from the end, but don't let that deter you; there are plenty more unrestrained paranormal atrocities to keep horror nuts happy – including a bonkers scene in which (for reasons completely unclear) a concussed man (Anthony Flees) is attacked by a clutch of tarantulas which proceed to sting his face and bite his flesh! It's a monstrously visionary notion which would have been all the more terrifying if half the arachnids hadn't been laughably puppeteered props! Still, half the fun of these vintage cult oddities is chuckling at the cheese...


In a CR@B Shell: Despite being produced just a year after City, The Beyond feels like the work of a far more experienced director; the script is sharper, the scares more complimentary to the narrative and the ghastly effects more polished (well, except the spiders). I still think he's barmy, but perhaps I was too hasty in writing Fulci off...?
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Wail of the Weeping Woman

DVD Review: DAMNED BY DAWN
15 – 81mins – 2010
Story by: Brett Anstey, Russell Friedrich, Rob Townshend
Screenplay by: Brett Anstey
Directed by: Brett Anstey
Starring: Renee Willner, Bridget Neval, Dawn Klingberg, Taryn Eva, Danny Alder, Mark Taylor, Peter Stratford
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Every week you'll witness a smattering of schlocky new genre releases dotted around the lower echelons of supermarket's DVD charts. Be they cheap cash-in sequels (such as the recent Mirrors 2) or small independent passion projects (such as the “After Dark Originals” series), few are worth shelling out your hard earned pennies for. There's a reason they didn't get a wide release, after all. Every now and then, however, one such cinema-evading spooker piques my novelty-susceptible interest – and 2010's Damned by Dawn, from intriguingly-monikered Australian's “The Amazing Krypto Bros”, certainly did that.

Admittedly, I was initially drawn to what I thought was a fanged vampire on the UK's whitewashed cover (see bottom pic), but a read through of the synopsis did little to dampen my interest; a soul-collecting Banshee with a scream to raise the dead sounded refreshingly original. And original Damned by Dawn undoubtedly is – even if my admiration was blotched by mild disappointment by the roll of the end credits.

As the life seeps evermore noticeably from her bed-ridden grandmother (Klingberg), twenty-something Claire O'Neill (Willner) returns to her father's (Stratford) run-down farmhouse for the first time in 18 months – with her boyfriend Paul (Alder) in tow. As Nana starts talking of a woman who will come to claim her soul when she passes, a spooked out Claire dismisses the creepy chatter as little more than illogical ravings – until the family are awoken by piercing shrieks in the middle of the night and their home is under threat from the recently risen dead; under the command of a wailing woman in white...

The screen continually cloaked in a dense fog, and the narrative unfolding entirely on the grounds of the eerie and isolated rural house, the filmmakers certainly cannot be accused of not summoning up a remarkably appropriate atmosphere. The Banshee – a blood-stained, ghost-faced, rag-wearing spirit – is a genuinely creepy creation. Alas, it soon becomes clear that her arsenal of abilities is strickly limited to floating and shrieking (the majority of which she does off screen) – making her no more fearsome than the ghouls she awakens.

On the subject of the ghouls – unearthed, supernaturally animated corpses – you have to admire the FX department for their budget-restricted effort, but, in truth, flying skeletons are not scary, and some of the atmosphere attributed to the Banshee is irredeemably eradicated by these ludicrous foes. Nonetheless, I will conceed to being impressed by the sequence in which Claire and her father speed away from the house in a car as countless airborne ghouls fly at the panic-stricken escapees.

Attempts to justify and add depth to the horrific events by tying the modern day phenomena to the O'Neill's family history by way of a black and white photograph, an heirloom urn and diary extracts from generations past are well meaning but ultimately fall short of lucid. As do the poorly-executed endeavours to grant the human characters with rounded personalities (the father's quickly forgotten kookiness; Claire's scarcely unmentioned secret). Ultimately, the film's greatest elements are the most gory (a gut-spewing, unrelenting zombie attack in the kitchen), and although the make-up is slapped on a little thick in parts, Damned by Dawn is an admirably gutsy independent chiller.


In a CR@B Shell: Small in scale but big in ambition, Brett Anstey's Damned by Dawn may forsake some of its unearthly ambiance with unintentionally gigglesome adversaries, but make no mistake – there is a gallant and damned spirited concept at the core of this low budget offering.
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Ghost Writer

Book Review: THE THIRTEENTH TALE
Written by: Diane Setterfield
456pages
Published by: Orion
Released: 2006
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Devouring this novel’s last 250 pages in one mammoth session is probably the fastest I have ever read a book. Faster even than I read The Book Thief or The Girl with the Dagon Tattoo, two works I couldn’t consume fast enough and would unquestionably ordain as modern classics. I cannot proclaim quite the same level of adulation for debut author Diane Setterfield’s fragmented and revelatory gothic mystery, but I had a book club deadline to keep to and was determined to make it.

Of course any novel which holds your attention for that length of uninterrupted time must be doing something right; I was certainly never bored by the valiant tale-within-a-tale structure, with Setterfield building suspense by drip-feeding the story through a strict authorial narrator. The Thirteenth Tale introduces us to bookish amateur biographer Margaret Lea, hired by reclusive and secretive author Vida Winter to write a biography of the novelist’s extraordinary upbringing.

The novel drifts between Miss Winter’s vivid recounting of her family’s past and modern-day research Margaret undertakes to determine whether her storytelling interviewee is actually – finally – telling the truth, or merely spinning her scribe another yarn. The gravely ill Miss Winter has handpicked Margaret for a particular reason, and soon the author’s tale is impacting and intertwining with Margaret’s present.

Miss Winter’s storytelling expertise lends a masterful gloss to her history lesson. She knows when to end each session to tease a future plotline. You find yourself determined to read on to uncover every last detail of her story. But the fact that it is her story is the concept around which the entire novel wobbles: Margaret reacts to what she hears, guiding our reactions, and were Miss Winter more open with Margaret, the skill of the exposure would be lost and the truth too plainly – and painfully – laid bare. Vida Winter understands this because Setterfield understands this, which is why there is a beginning, middle and end to all good stories, even true ones.

This guiding of our reactions is laid on a little thick with a few too many nods and winks towards “ghosts”, “mists”, “twins” and classic novels with analogous themes – it is an attempt to endow the everyday with a supernatural quality which is hardly necessary given the complexity of the plot. We, the reader, can already ascertain that something is amiss (the fact that Vida has countless times previous told reporters a pack of lies about her past; her reluctance to say “I” when referring to herself; etcetera), so any further efforts to mystify the mysterious are completely superfluous.

Given the span of time covered by Miss Winter’s life story, there are a depressing number of deaths and disappearances in and around the catalytic Angelfield/March homestead (March being Vida’s christened name). Nobody is introduced who doesn’t have an impact upon the story, so their spirits may linger long after their corporeal shell expires, but the shadow of death does lend the novel a cheerless and morbid edge when practically every character you are introduced to grows old, loses their mind and dies – in astonishingly swift succession.

On the subject of death, Margaret’s deceased twin – a source of much uneasiness between herself and her selfish, absent mother – feels like an unnecessary addition. Sure, it gives Miss Winter – herself a twin – a connection with her “amputee” (as Margaret refers to herself; incomplete since losing her other “half”) transcriber, but it feels bolted on and never really embeds itself completely into the narrative, standing on the periphery until a flimsy and implausible post-script resolution undermines the previous 450 pages in a page and a half.

The same can also be said about the mystery surrounding the title: The Thirteenth Tale – a missing story from one of Vida Winter’s most popular publications which randomly gets mentioned throughout the modern day passages as a way of justifying the novel’s title. It enforces an importance on what would otherwise be little more than a fleeting query, so you expect its exposure to be monumental. When, many years later, Margaret finally reads the lost tale, its autobiographical nature seems to be the only reason for its omission, which is something of an anticlimax; all of the juicy revelations exposed many chapters prior.


In a CR@B Shell: Never stagnant, The Thirteenth Tale is easy to read but hard to love, given the austere and transitory nature of its ever-changing cast. But Setterfield certainly knows how to hook you in by tantalising many clues and half-truths throughout Vida Winter’s florid account of life as a twin, making for a curious and absorbing gothic unravelling.
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Spectral Healing

Book Review: THE WINTER GHOSTS
Written by: Kate Mosse
272 pages – Orion – 2009
www.katemosse.com
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Compressing her favoured novel-forming ingredients of historical globe-trotting mysteries and period-spanning dual protagonists into a much sparser work than we have come to expect from the British fiction writer, Kate Mosse’s The Winter Ghosts makes for a quick but unfulfilling read – its origins as a short story (The Cave) all too apparent.

It’s a source of great debate (in my mind, at least) as to whether the story of Post Traumatic Stress-sufferer Freddie Watson – long mourning the loss of his brother in the Great War, and his own peace of mind – is too short, or too long. Mosse spends such a great early chunk of the book pouring over this poor shell of a man, that by the time the eponymous paranormal activity takes place, the story is all-but-over.

On a head cleansing road trip through the French Pyrenees in 1928, the grief-stricken young man spins his car off the road and, stumbling through the woodland, finds sanctuary in the quaint village of Nulle, where over the course of a single night he meets (and falls in love with) a similarly tragic young woman called Fabrissa, who allows Freddie the chance to open up about his loss and find peace with the ghosts which have long haunted his soul.

"Without understanding, there can
be no redemption"

Fabrissa’s heart-breaking story of being chased out of the village by religious extremists proves that Mosse certainly does her research (a similar area of French history was covered in her breakout hit Labyrinth), and an effort has clearly been made to evoke an off-kilter atmosphere, but the paper-thin plot feels contrived and stumbling; unnatural, while Freddie is so (understandably) self-absorbed that it is hard to care for his plight, even when he finds an unexpected resolution.


In a CR@B Shell: Atmospheric but insubstantial, The Winter Ghosts requires more phantoms, lengthier prose, less depression and fewer space-wasting photos to be anything more than a between-tomes filler project for Kate Mosse addicts.
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Ghosts in the Twilight

TV Review: THE HAUNTED AIRMAN
15 – 68mins – 2006
Teleplay by: Chris Durlacher
Based on the novel by: Dennis Wheatley
Directed by: Chris Durlacher
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Julian Sands, Rachael Sterling, Melisa Lloyd, Daniel Ainsleigh, Scott Handy, Peggy Popovic
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This loose literary reworking of Dennis Wheatley’s “The Haunting of Toby Jugg” stars Hollywood heart-throb Robert Pattinson in a post-Goblet, pre-Twilight role as the disabled and traumatised World War II RAF airman of the title, confined to a wheelchair and committed to a Welsh military hospital to recuperate both psychically and mentally from the injuries that have befallen him.

Whereas Wheatley's 1948 source novel had a strong element of the occult and genuine supernatural hocus-pocus, Chris Durlacher’s BBC Four adaptation keeps all the horrors inside Toby’s shell-shocked mind, as this psychologically damaged patient is plagued by nightmares of the innocent families he killed in bombing raids, while hallucination-conjured spiders scuttle en-mass over his duvet.

In the dreary daylight hours, meanwhile, Toby cannot escape the creeping suspicion that his doctor, Hal Burns (Julian Sands), doesn’t have his best interests at heart, while the aunt (yes, aunt) Toby loves and wishes to marry (Rachael Sterling) isn’t returning any of his handwritten correspondence. With all of this weighing on the disabled pilot’s mind, The Haunted Airman certainly provides the rising Brit-born star with a chance to stretch his limbs – dramatically speaking, at least. Not that Edward Cullen is ever a bundle of laughs...

But for all of the eerie atmosphere and low-shot camera angles, this modest dramatisation is simply far too sluggish to grip your attention, even at little over an hour long. Intercutting scenes within the dank hospital with scarlet-drenched flashbacks to deafeningly chaotic and dramatically shot war memories is clearly an attempt to stun and disillusion the viewer, but it merely comes across as a confusing hindrance, to little narrative purpose.

Style over substance? That certainly seems to be Durlacher's intention, but this tactic is only successful when a production's distinctiveness compliments the material, not when tumultuous cutaways are edited in to juxtapose the brooding and uneventful story at seemingly haphazard instances. Ultimately, the transient tale's conclusion fails to justify the build-up or deliver a satisfying enough twist to tie the events together, leaving you with a creeping suspicion that the cast and crew have somehow missed the point of Wheatley's vision entirely.


In a CR@B Shell: Arachnophobes will be paralysed with fear, but true horror hounds will be left dispirited. Wheatley fans, meanwhile, will cry blasphemy at the significant changes to the novel's essence. Mark this weary Beeb “thriller” up as strictly for R-Patz droolers only.
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What Possessed Them?

Cine Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2
15 – 90mins – 2010
Story by: Michael R. Perry
Screenplay by: Michael R. Perry, Christopher B. Landon, Tom Pabst
Directed by: Tod Williams
Starring: Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim, Tim Clemens, Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
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[SPOILERS] Last year’s Paranormal Activity was a monster hit in both respects of the phrase. Made on a miniscule budget in one location with a tiny crew and unknown actors, Oren Peli’s supernatural psychological horror was a genuinely distressing affair which left audience’s utterly petrified, without depicting anything more than a crumpled old photograph and a smashed picture frame. God, we’re such wimps!

Given the overwhelmingly positive word of mouth and humungous box office returns, a follow-up really was a no-brainer, even if Katie (Featherstone) and Micah’s (Sloat) story had rather abruptly come to a close. But this wouldn’t be Hollywood if they weren’t able to find some “ingenious” way to capitalise on their properties and squeeze as much money from the brand name as was (in)humanly possible.

So just twelve months later Paranormal Activity 2 takes a bow at the Halloween 2010 box office, although it’s technically a prequel to the original (a bug bear of mine given the numeric implication it is second in the sequence…), expanding upon Katie and Micah’s woes by introducing us to Katie’s sister, Kristi Rey (Grayden), whom we are already aware was plagued by a supernaturally paranoid upbringing.

Presented in an identical handheld/security cam style of “recovered” footage (again without titles or credits, adding a chilling sense of realism by not taking you out of the diegetic reality), this sequel documents the homecoming of Kristi and husband Dan’s (Boland) newborn son Hunter with snapshots of his first months, but the pace slows when the family’s house is broken into (or so they presume) and surveillance cameras are installed to catch any future culprits.

What the hidden cameras detect is far more disconcerting than a random ransacking, however, as pool cleaners miraculously elevate out of the water, Hunter’s baby mobile spins of its own accord, Dan’s teenage daughter Ali (Ephraim) is locked out of the house by a phantom gust of wind and the family’s German Shepard, Abby, is hospitalised after an attack from thin air.

Ali is in equal parts fascinated and freaked by their haunted house as she scours the internet for answers which only hint at the bigger picture, while events take an unsettling slide into the demonic when Kristi is violently dragged by the malevolent spirit into the cellar and re-emerges vacant and unresponsive but with a worryingly protective attitude towards her baby son…

Okay, I’ll admit it: Paranormal Activity 2 was, like its predecessor, a truly tense and jumpy horror. It freaked the hell out of me for hours afterwards; particularly Kristi’s unsettlingly possessed bawls. It was also a remarkably unifying film in that the audience I saw it with seemed to react in harmony with one another. Strangers from across the cinema were calling out in agreement when people screamed or laughed at a faux-thrill. Normally this behaviour would irritate the crap out of me, but in this case it just confirmed that this horror was a resounding and unparalleled success.

But – and this is the crux – as competent as the scares were, at the back of my mind was the niggling query: is this film really necessary? It was clever to interweave the narrative with the original story, granted, but the reasoning for inflicting the original film’s events upon sister Katie was a tad laboured to say the least.

Ultimately, however, this sequel didn’t bring anything new to the table, either: things go bump in the night, again, household appliances move, fall and turn themselves on, again, doors spring open without being pushed, again, a character consults – but ultimately ignores – a ouiji board, again, someone gets pulled forcibly through the house by their leg, again... But other than the family’s housekeeper burning incense and chanting, nobody makes an exerted effort to exorcise the baby-fixated blighter!

Disappointingly, nothing is made of the iconic trailer climax with Hunter visible in the mirror but not in his cot. Furthermore, nothing is made of the creepy message scrawled on the glass, and the often-used image of a hooded Kristi (or is it Katie? Irrelevant now) standing ominously in the nursery doorway is also nowhere to be seen in the film. All this intrigue and mystery came to nothing; a fantastically tantalising trailer which did its job in getting the fans talking, but was ultimately packed with a raft of red herrings...

Surprise, surprise, the actual film’s conclusion was left open for more (and given the opening weekend gross, it is looking more and more likely), but I just hope that Paranormal Activity doesn’t become the new Saw with a new, ever-diminishing entry every Halloween. There are only so many times that an invisible enemy can freak out a cinema full of punters by dropping a pan from a kitchen rack before the paranormal becomes predictably normal.


In a CR@B Shell: Just as frightening as the original, if hardly breaking any new ground in expanding upon Katie and Micah’s story. A sleepless night will follow, but please, Paramount , don’t make a third…
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Curry On Killing

DVD Review: IT’S A WONDERFUL AFTERLIFE
12 – 97mins – 2010
Written by: Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha
Directed by: Gurinder Chadha
Starring: Shabana Azmi, Goldy Notay, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sally Hawkins, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Shaheen Khan, Ash Varrez, Adlyn Ross, Zoë Wanamaker, Jimi Mistry, Mark Addy
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Dumped by her fiancé six months ago, downtrodden Roopi Sethi (Goldy Notay) has let herself go: lacking in confidence and comfort eating to fill the void left in her life, much to the distress of her meddling, matrimony-mad mother (Shabana Azmi).

Mortified by the unsympathetic rejections her daughter receives, the widowed Mrs Sethi takes her marriage obsession to a preposterous extreme by killing off the shallow parents of her daughter’s potential suitors in all manner of Indian food related ways (suffocated by naan bread, fed curry until their stomach explodes, stabbed by kebab skewer, you get the gist).

I can thoroughly comprehend why director Gurinder Bend It Like Beckham Chadha’s latest Ealing-set cultural comedy was slaughtered by critics; watching the spirits of Mrs Sethi’s victims return to help the exasperated (and totally implausible) serial killer find love for her daughter is an abysmally wretched premise.

Futhermore, the barmy plot is totally predictable – the minute old family friend turned Detective Inspector, Raj “Googly” Murthy (Sendhil Heroes Ramamurthy), is tasked with going undercover as Roopi’s boyfriend to determine a motive for the crime the police believe she is guilty of, you just know it will lead to nuptials – and I have a real problem with the off-kilter morals of a film which so easily forgives a murderer.*

That being said, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife – from the pun in the title to a Carrie-riffing psychic hullabaloo at a wedding reception – obviously knows it is over-the-top pap, and it plays up to it with unrepentant verve. The ghostly make up looks ridiculously theatrical, the Asian influence brings a deluge of music and colour, and the star speckled cast – particularly Steve “T4” Jones cameoing as a newsreporter and Sally Hawkins as kooky spiritualist Linda – camp it up and play for laughs.

The film’s nauseating lack of refinement definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, but how can you take a film seriously where Zoë Wanamaker chokes on a cake laced with rat poison and Mark Addy gets a pair of secateurs in the groin?


In a CR@B Shell: Bonkers, brash and naan of it makes a shred of sense, but It’s a Wonderful Afterlife falls on the spirited side of silly. Gurinder Chadha’s latest won't win over any new fans, but it's a floridly farcical distraction from reality.
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* Where’s the korma in that?! Boom boom!

Animated Afterlife

Boxset Review: THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS – THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
PG – 4hours 55mins (total) – 1986/2009
Story Editor: J. Michael Straczynski
Based on the characters created by: Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
Director: Richard Raynis
Starring the voices of: Arsenio Hall, Maurice La Marche, Lorenzo Music, Laura Summer, Frank Welker
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Finally released on Region 2 DVD last year to coincide with the live action film's 25th Anniversary (and the multi-platform video game), this double disc collection of all 13 episodes from The Real Ghostbusters's debut season is a real trip down memory lane for any child of the eighties who used to roam their house in a makeshift proton-pack, zapping all the phantoms in the furniture. Oh – just me then...?

Instantly elevated to the precipice of greatness by the use of that classic theme song by Ray Parker Jnr. (“Who You Gonna Call?” NOT 118!), these further animated adventures of the phantom-blasting foursome (and cheeky glutton Slimer) manage to stay tonally true to the horror/comedy original: a pop-tastic soundtrack (unexpected in a cartoon, but effectively employed) and a heavy helping of humour help to recreate the wit and banter of the cult classic film.

Fan favourite Peter Venkman (Lorenzo Music) – in true Bill Murray style – is the deliverer of bucket-loads of dry sarcasm, but the entire team have their fair share of witticisms, and Slimer is on hand to keep the kids chuckling with a heavy dose of food-related slapstick, much to Peter's constant irritation.

Each episode runs for under 23 minutes, but the well-constructed scripts do manage to pack a surprising amount of ghostly activity, human interest and laughs into their runtime, and there is very little repetition in the paranormal storylines, even if the writers – among them the man who would go on to create Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski – are occasionally guilty of falling back on a high-concept plot devise to save the day. Prepare yourself for plenty of high-tech equipment rigging to reverse the polarity of the containment unit's flow and close the interdimensional vortex to another dimensional realm – it's all utter gubbins, but pleasant enough fun.

Despite a rights issue meaning the animators were not able to recreate the exact likenesses of the film's main stars, The Real Ghostbusters still does a superb job of falling in step with the established universe. “Citizen Ghost” successfully retro-fits the continuity following the Buster's filmic battle with Gozer to explain the shedding of their beige uniforms for multicoloured replacements, the rebuilding of their fire house HQ and quite how former foe Slimer escaped the containment unit yet still hung around to wind up the team.

“Take Two” is a giant wink to the audience as the team head to Hollywood to okay a film script about their adventures. Ramis, Aykroyd and Murray – but, interestingly, not Hudson – all get a reference, while Peter openly acknowledges “He looks nothing like me!!” The episode closes on the guys watching actual footage from the 1984 film (albeit with the voices dubbed) at the film's premiere.

In these areas the cartoon is surprisingly well suited to older audiences who will appreciate the nuances and in-jokes – secretary Janine (Laura Summers) still fancies Egon (Maurice Futurama La Marche) and even the iconic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man gets a cameo in “Sandman, Dream Me A Dream” – however, it is a shame that at times the supernatural creations are so blatantly targeted at the toy market; their brightly coloured, infantile and hyperbolic styles sit awkwardly alongside the more realistic human characters. But then, this is a cartoon about ghosts, so I understand the decision to highlight the wacky over the scary, for the sake of young children.


CR@B Verdict: Despite often pandering to its target demographic, fans of the 80's live action films will find plenty to smile about in these above average animated adventures. The UK release is no match for Region 1's stupendous The Complete Collection, but at under a fiver it sure beats waiting around for the long muted second sequel.
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