The Ghoul (2017)

“Weird, Intriguing and Really Rather Good Low Budget BritHorror”

Writer-director Gareth Tunley’s low budget mind bending (or even looping - see below) horror gets a UK DVD & Blu-ray release from Arrow.

Homicide detective Chris (Tom Meeten) has just arrived in London from the North. He’s called in to investigate a strange double murder in a suburban home, one where despite being shot several times, it seems as if the victims kept walking towards their attacker before they finally succumbed. 

Suspicion falls on Michael Coulson (Rufus Jones from HUNDERBY) who is seeing a psychotherapist called Fisher (Niamh Cusack). Chris goes undercover as a patient with depression to get a look at Fisher’s files on Coulson.

Or is that really what is going on?

Is Chris actually a patient weaving an elaborate fantasy about being a police detective? Is Kathleen (Alice Lowe) actually a psychological profiler or a teacher at a local primary school? Is Jim (Dan Renton Skinner) his colleague or Kathleen’s husband? And most important of all (and this is where it gets really interesting) is Alexander Morland (good old Geoffrey McGivern), who Chris gets referred to for further therapy, possibly a black magician who needs to trap Chris in a time loop to ensure Morland’s own immortality?

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there are no easy answers, but there are plenty of options for you to chew over after the film has finished. Even minor dialogue exchanges (“You should have stayed in the North” says Kathleen early on) take on greater importance. In fact the biggest surprise here is how very good THE GHOUL is on only the slimmest of budgets. 

Arrow’s disc comes with a commentary track by Tunley, star Meeten and producer Jack Healy Guttmann, as well as a making of with plenty of interviews, as well as Tunley’s short film THE BARON (2013) and a trailer.

         The press release compares THE GHOUL to Roeg and Cammell’s PERFORMANCE & Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY and while those comparisons are valid, Gareth Tunley’s film really is its own, special, weird thing and as such is definitely worth checking out. 

Gareth Tunley's THE GHOUL is out on DVD & Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 4th September 2017