Count Magnus

Over the past couple of years, I've caught up on a lot of these Christmas ghost stories that the BBC have been providing over the decades. Mark Gatiss has been the most recent custodian, and the last few years this has been his baby, but the MR James adaptations go all the way back to the 1970's. Unfortunately, whilst this one had lots of excellent build up, there was very little payoff.

Mr Wraxhall (Jason Watkins) heads to a Swedish estate to investigate the history of the de La Gardie family and meet their current Froken (MyAnna Buring). Conversations with the locals turn him on to Count Magnus de la Gardie, a cruel landowner, who is long dead and interred in a mausoleum on the estate. On investigation, he discovers that his sarcophagus is padlocked shut. Further enquiry leads him to learn that Count Magnus went on a 'dark pilgrimage' to Chorazin and a story about the unfortunate fate of two men who went poaching on his land at night.

Again, to a point it's all great. Jason Watkins is his usual brilliant self and the rest of the cast wonderfully aide building the tension. The visits to the mausoleum are scary with the padlocks either opening, or being open on each visit. But there's no real pay off to the decent build. There's one moment of genuine horror at the resolution of the flashback to the two men, but nothing to really pay off the actual story. I do believe in principle in things you don't see being scarier than the things you do, but I think there need to be hints leading you towards what something might look like. Here's I just feel like they didn't have the money to do anything, so it rather peters out to an underwhelming conclusion.

I didn't hate it, but last years "Mezzotint" was better realised.

Another disappointing M. R. James Christmas ghost story adaptation from Mark Gatiss, who is by now chalking up more misses than hits. This one's an adaptation of a rarer story, which is commendable in itself, but it completely misses the mark and turns half an hour into a very dull experience indeed. It's cheap-looking throughout, with producers simply raiding the BBC costume department and filming in a couple of rooms in a stately mansion, and the chills are diluted in favour of absolutely endless exposition. Yes, it's a boring talkathon with one good scare in a flashback and absolutely nothing else going on. There's no atmosphere or suspense, the actors are crying out for direction, and I wish Gatiss would call it a day now.

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.

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.

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.