Flicks’ must-see ghost movies. Dominic Corry investigates all things spooky and see-through…
Beetlejuice
1988 | Directed by Tim Burton | Starring Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin
Tim Burton’s breakout success (with Michael Keaton so memorably playing the titular role, a mischievous ghost with disgusting personal hygiene) may principally be a comedy, but there is some genuinely freaky stuff in here – remember the weird waiting room? Plus it’s such a celebration of overall ghostliness, it had to be on this list.
Now let’s just pray the Beetlejuice project currently in development is a sequel and NOT a remake.
Dead of Night
1945 | Directed by Robert Hamer, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden | Starring Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Sally Ann Howes
This classic British anthology film helped inspire the horror anthology boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and serves as a very watchable embodiment of the genteel British ghost story tradition.
Five stories are told, with a supremely creepy wraparound tale involving a mysterious gathering at a country house. The most famous of the five serves as cinema’s definitive ‘haunted ventriloquist’s dummy’ story and remains starkly chilling more than 65 years after it was made.
The Shining
1980 | Directed by Stanley Kubrick | Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
This tale of a haunted hotel is the best haunted house movie ever made.
The sheer undeniable horror of each ghostly apparition that appears throughout (those two sisters; the creepy barman; THE NAKED BATH LADY!) is greatly enhanced by the something-isn’t-right-here tone so masterfully created by director Stanley Kubrick, as well as Jack Nicholson’s suitably over-the-top performance.
Stephen King was famously displeased with this adaptation of his book. He is wrong.
Ghostbusters
1986 | Directed by Ivan Reitman | Starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis
Even more so than Beetlejuice, this ‘80s classic demonstrates how a film can generate both chills and laughter – do you remember the first time you saw the library ghost from the opening turn around and scream?
Ghostbusters helped expand the cinematic definition of ghosts and introduced the world to the concept of ‘ectoplasm’. It gets extra points for involving H.P. Lovecraft-esque inter-dimensional threat in the huge finale.
The Haunting
1963 | Directed by Robert Wise | Starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson
Forget the CGI-infested 1999 remake, this adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House is the Jaws of ghost stories – it generates more tension and thrills by what it doesn’t show rather than by what it does.
Shot in stark black and white by Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), the plot concerns a psychological experiment in a supposedly haunted manor and gets some mileage out of the notion that the emotionally feeble are more prone to ghosts than others.
The Orphanage
2007 | Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona | Starring Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Prínce
This Guillermo Del Toro-produced Spanish-Mexican ghost story is the scariest film to be released in the last ten years.
It concerns a woman who moves her family into the orphanage she lived in as a girl. Resisting any showy methods for generating scares, debuting director J.A. Bayona builds up an incredibly rich atmosphere which invites viewers in before pummeling them with the ghostly stuff.
If you haven’t already, get out and see this before the planned American remake.
Poltergeist
1982 | Directed by Tobe Hooper | Starring Heather O’Rourke, JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson
Along with Ghostbusters, this Steven Spielberg-written and produced (but not directed, unless you believe the rumours that he actually did) help make cinematic ghosts all the more physically tangible by having them embodied as grabby trees and hungry televisions.
Undermined by crappy sequels, the original holds up as an extremely well constructed suburban nightmare.
The Ring
2002 | Directed by Gore Verbinski | Starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox
The Japanese horror boom met its apex (I would argue) with this American remake that assembled the ideas behind the 1998 original into a more coherent and scary film.
It helped bring a new notion of ghostly horror (involving scary girls with wet hair) to western audiences and delivered an uniquely evil ghost in the form of little Samara, who never sleeps. And by successfully messing with plot expectations, it also managed to provide a wallop of a finale.
The Sixth Sense
1999 | Directed by M. Night Shyamalan | Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette
Once you get past the infamous, and overly focused-upon, twist ending (is there anyone out there who is still not aware of this?), there is a beautifully constructed classic ghost story here.
Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan manages to generate scares and pathos in equal measure, touchingly encompassing the tragic nature of ghosts while not sacrificing their scariness.
The definitive modern ghost story.
Stir of Echoes
1999 | Directed by David Koepp | Starring Kevin Bacon, Zachary David Cope, Kathryn Erbe
Overshadowed by The Sixth Sense upon its poorly-timed release, this Kevin Bacon-starring chiller is worthy of re-discovery.
The Baconator (rarely better) plays a sceptical Bostonian in a nicely evoked working class neighbourhood who begins experiencing visions after he submits to being hypnotised at a party. Loosely based on a book by legendary Twilight Zone script-writer Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), this overlooked film contains some extremely unsettling ghostliness.
