The time has come to tell the tale.
I was just a little one when I had my first peek at Ghost Story. One of my parents was watching it on cable, I can't remember which one, and I plopped down to watch a bit with them. I was taken in by the images of a snow swept New England townscape, watching an old man wander through the snow in his pajamas with a fluffy winter coat and boots on over it. Creepy music is playing as he walks through town. He stops on a bridge and hears a woman's voice behind him. He turns around and the camera turns with him, revealing a decomposing corpse of a specter behind him. Cue little Nate hiding behind a pillow and nearly crapping himself in fright. That scene has been burned in my brain ever since. Needless to say it was a good long while before I saw the entire film.
The film opens, not unlike The Fog, with Sears James (played by John Houseman) telling a ghost story to his three friends, Ricky Hawthorne (played by Fred Astaire), John Jaffreys (played by Melvyn Douglas) and Edward Wanderley (played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). The four men make up a club called the Chowder Society and share gruesome, scary stories with one another. The four men also share a terrible secret which is now coming back to haunt them.
After the mysterious death of his twin brother David, Don Wanderley (both played by Craig Wasson) returns home to be with his dad. Late one night, while looking through some of his Dad's old things, he's shocked to find a picture of a woman, Alma (played by Alice Krige), who he had known along with all four members of the Chowder society back in their college days. As he tells them, Don met her while he was teaching at a University down south. He eventually broke it off with her when her behavior became more erratic and odd. She then moved on to his brother and Don thinks she is responsible for his death.
The Chowder Society in turn tells their tale to Don of the girl in the photograph, Eva (also played by Krige) that all four of the boys took a liking to. She ultimately chose Edward, but during their romantic night together, he was unable to perform. Later on, when she threatens to tell the other boys the truth about that night, he pushes her and she falls, hitting her head on the marble mantelpiece. Believing she's dead the four boys panic. Fearing scandal (Edward has political aspirations), the four boys load Eva into her car and drive to a secluded pond. The car is driven into the pond and the four watch as it sinks into the watery depths. Except, just before the car sinks below the surface Eva pops up in the window, still alive and crying for help. Horrified and powerless to help all they can do is watch. Edward runs into the pond to try and rescue her but it's too dark. The scene is played perfectly and is quite horrifying. This is the secret that has kept the four men wracked with guilt ever since.
Don states that he thinks Eva came back in the form of Alma and is determined to exact her revenge on the four boys. Ricky agrees while the others shrug it off initially. But as strange occurrences continue to haunt them, it becomes clear Eva has returned, determine to pick them off one by one. Her revenge also extends to Edward's two boys, since both boys also rejected her and ruined her initial revenge plans that involved re-appearing in the life of Edward and his friends as his son's bride. When that didn't work out, she went for a more overt revenge plan.
Ghost Story is a very much a plot driven spook story, more concerned with creating a chilling and creepy atmosphere and less with jump scares (although there are a couple, including the one described above). In that regard it is successful. It does have the fault of dragging a bit in the middle, but still remains fairly intriguing all the way through. I always appreciated that the film took the time to give us an extended flashback, giving us the backstory of the four boys and their summer with Eva. It is admittingly quite dysfunctional with four boys and one girl, charged with an underlining homoeroticism that I'm honestly not sure was intentional or not. But if you look at it in that context, Edwards actions make a lot of sense. All he wants to do is hang out with the boys, even when they leave him alone with Eva to do their thing.
Overall, Ghost Story is an intriguing and at times very scary movie. It has an absolute dynamite cast, with four acting legends in the main roles, in fact this was the last film a couple of them made. The film is well directed by John Irvin and a memorable and creepy score by Phillipe Sarde. It's well worth checking out if you're in the mood for a unique and creepy spook story.
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