Ghost Stories (2017)

 I love a good twist.

I think there are few moments as powerful in media as a good surprise, the moment when you think you know what's going to happen but then you discover that the writer is smarter than you thought and probably smarter than you. 

I love a good twist not only because not knowing where a story is going to go is exciting unto itself, but also because it turns what might be a bland movie, or even a good movie, and turns it into a better one.

Pyscho is relatively boring, sorry to say, especially for modern audiences that know the famous shower murder scene. There's a few cool shots of people falling down stairs, and Anthony Perkins' performance as Norman Bates is awesome, but besides that, the movie is quite dull until the final reveal of "mother". However, we take this movie to be a masterpiece as a whole because that twist is so damn good.

I really loved the first 75% or so of Ghost Stories. I really did. There's a framing device to the story and then three short vignettes, each just as scary as the last. I think this is difficult to achieve, because while it's possible to be scared of one specific monster for an entire movie, building up the fear of one danger in a short amount of time takes more skill. Each vignette has its own circumstances and style and all of them are amazing.

But then, the twist. The story starts out with a paranormal investigator meeting his idol, a fellow paranormal investigator close to death and retired for many years. The retired skeptic tells him that he was wrong to doubt the supernatural all along, and then invites him to examine the three cases that led him to reconsider his position.

Cool premise, right? We all start off on the side of the skeptic when watching these movies, so we identify with this protagonist. We also don't believe any of this ghost bullshit. We challenge the movie to challenge us.

The paranormal investigator interviews the three cases, and as he does, circumstances around him also start to become strange. He starts seeing things. Numbers are hinted at in the background. The issue of the protagonist's faith and his family come into play. He sees a ghostly apparition of himself.

This of course being a film with basically three seemingly unconnected stories and a framing device, you as an audience member are left wondering, "How do these stories tie together? Is there something in the background that I missed?" I genuinely did not know where the story was going, and, this is key, I loved that feeling.

And then, seeing that there's no way to tie all these stories together, the movie just...doesn't. It takes a third act left turn that I hesitate to call a twist because it took a great premise and great buildup, and turned it into something that can generously be called "mediocre".

I would have been very happy with a good twist. But, more importantly, the movie was going just fine as it was, setting up lots of little themes and ideas throughout the runtime. At some point, I think, if the protagonist just got fucking murdered by the old man, I would have been satisfied with that non-ending. (Paranormal investigations told by an idiot, signifying nothing.)

But then it fucks it up and wastes all this good potential. If you watch this one, just stop after about an hour and pretend like the main character had a heart attack and died.