A Ghost Story For Christmas, the classic franchise, and this is the best the BBC can come up with? It would be laborious to define in full detail how disappointing this installment is, and while no episode has ever reached the creepy heights of Jonathan Miller's series progenitor Whistle And I'll Come To You, surely the minimum requirement for any tale should be a chilling/eerie atmosphere.
The Dead Room, sadly, is more like wading through a swamp so banal that its closing cliche somehow becomes the least of its offences. It pretty much amounts to half an hour of talking-heads exposition, and the arch tone of the first third's dialogue, as the lead explains the requirements of an optimum ghost story, is really the film's prime insult given what follows. Aside from this particular kick in the nuts, there are a multitude of sins on display, only some of which are -
Dialogue so on-the-nose and wholly without subtlety or subtext that the characters may as well say 'let me spell this out for you, stupid'. Leaden performances by otherwise fine actors (see: bad dialogue). The most pedestrian editing imaginable. Ill-considered choices of camera composition. A closing moment that you will recall from 692 other films before your eyeballs roll back an entire 180 degrees.
The last point would be insulting enough in itself but by the time you get to the end, if you've made it that far, it really doesn't matter anymore. To care about it would be something like cursing the bruise on your little toe after your leg has been hacked off. For a film that has the gall to explain what makes a good ghost story it does a hell of a job of showing us what doesn't.
The Dead Room, sadly, is more like wading through a swamp so banal that its closing cliche somehow becomes the least of its offences. It pretty much amounts to half an hour of talking-heads exposition, and the arch tone of the first third's dialogue, as the lead explains the requirements of an optimum ghost story, is really the film's prime insult given what follows. Aside from this particular kick in the nuts, there are a multitude of sins on display, only some of which are -
Dialogue so on-the-nose and wholly without subtlety or subtext that the characters may as well say 'let me spell this out for you, stupid'. Leaden performances by otherwise fine actors (see: bad dialogue). The most pedestrian editing imaginable. Ill-considered choices of camera composition. A closing moment that you will recall from 692 other films before your eyeballs roll back an entire 180 degrees.
The last point would be insulting enough in itself but by the time you get to the end, if you've made it that far, it really doesn't matter anymore. To care about it would be something like cursing the bruise on your little toe after your leg has been hacked off. For a film that has the gall to explain what makes a good ghost story it does a hell of a job of showing us what doesn't.