Count Magnus

I have read some of the poor reviews here and wonder if M. R. James's reputation can survive into the 21st century given our jaded sensibilities. He is a restrained writer in full command of the impression he registers in readers. He leads them quietly down a rationalist path, then suddenly springs the trap with a ghastly breach of ordinary reality on the unprepared reader and protagonist alike. And he does so as economically as possible, leaving the readers' imaginations to fill in the fullness of a horror that lurks in a dusty corner, behind a bolted door, beneath a sheet, a pillowcase, or in the depths of a crypt, a tunnel or a well. The lack of satisfying explanation adds to the frisson of terror. He never shows more than necessary or feeds the appetite for the explicit or the garish. I think Gattis's approach here mirrors James's. He conjures a foreign realm of which the self-satisfied and superior English rationalist is entirely dismissive. The ugly Englishman ignores local lore, religion, and customs. He thereby puts himself into the crosshairs of an evil he is entirely incapable of acknowledging much less combatting. And if we understand the full import of what he has awakened, we needn't stare it in the face to find it frightening. The looming shadow of an unholy figure, the flash of a half-consumed visage and wicked laughter from the wings is enough.

This adaptation did not have the tone or atmosphere of an M. R. James ghost story. It's very disappointing from Mark Gatiss.

I like Jason Watkins as an actor and have been impressed with him in other things, but his performance here is mostly phoned in. I also thought he gave too much of a comedic performance. Whilst in the original story Mr Wraxall does sing to himself, I never thought the story was meant to be light-hearted.

There was a complete lack of suspense or danger due to the way this was written and directed, and it also did not evoke the appropriate feeling of the time it was set in. The characters seem like people playing dress up for fun.

There was one character invented - a mute black man. Why on earth? He looks so conically out of place. In fact he looks ridiculous, and it completely ruins any immersion, but there was barely any to begin with. His role added nothing to the story, but I suspect the BBC required it.

I would give this a miss, it really is a waste of time and not even remotely scary or eerie. Better to watch one of the original run of A Ghost Story for Christmas from the 1970s.

As a lover of the annual English Christmas ghost story tradition, I was hoping for a lot more than what was actually served up to us with this 2022 Christmas ghost story treat.

Zero atmosphere, poor casting, dull predictable cinematography which lacked subtly and imagination, the Director stomps his way through this tale with as much presence as the omnipresent smoke machine which loyally pumps away in the background throughout most of the shots in this poor visual effort of a film. Please Mr Gatiss allow someone else to take on the next Christmas ghost story installment, or unfortunately this wonderful christmas tradition will die a unremarkable death. M. R. James will never forgive you.

Gatiss's trek through the MR James back catalogue for fresh Christmas scares continues apace in Count Magnus. In essence the whole thing is built around the undoing of the pompous Herr Wraxhall, here played with glorious panache by the brilliant Jason Watkins. It's a role made for him really and his increasing consternation is a thing of serious wonder. There's a nicely Hammeresque vibe to the foreign "otherness" of the Swedish locale and the gothic atmosphere and local character feel spectacularly camp. As with all of these Gatiss seasonal spooks the big shocks feel a little underdone and the end a little flat, but the journey and the casting is more than half the fun here. Long may the format continue!

This version of the classic M. R. James tale seems to have aroused the spleen of several commenters -- unduly, I think. Though I'm a lifelong James devotee with a particular affection for "Count Magnus," I don't think ANY film is going to do his stories justice. They are fragile confections, highly dependent, for their effect, on the dry, slightly droll tone of their narration; and whatever shudders they provoke are sometimes dependent on just a line or two of description, or even on a single phrase.

In order to properly fill up half an hour, Gatiss had to expand and augment the original tale. No, he isn't wholly successful -- this version isn't as sharp, wry, and subtle as the original -- but it's a worthy little horror film that I found sufficiently unsettling to keep me on edge, and it's certainly an improvement over the earlier James adaptations on TV. The dialogue Gattis has added seems fairly clever, and Jason Watkins is extremely well cast as the pompous, over-inquisitive protagonist.

P. S. I do think the film is a bit nasty and downbeat for Christmas (especially for kids), but the same can probably be said of most James tales -- and yet Christmas was apparently when he liked to tell them, as his contribution to the ghost-stories-at-Yuletide tradition.