Urban Ghost Story Year: 1998 Director: Geneviève Jolliffe Written by: Geneviève Jolliffe, Chris Jones Threat: Poltergeist Weapon of Choice: Loud noises Based upon: nothing IMDb page:

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Rish's Reviews
Urban Ghost Story was a film shot a few years ago and recently released on video due to the success of one of its stars. My mother rented it, thinking the family could use a little depression in our otherwise bucolic day to day lives. Thanks, Ma.
Heather Ann Foster played Lizzie Fisher, a troubled young Scottish girl who loses her best friend to a car accident, then experiences bouts of melancholy mixed with mysterious poltergeist activity in her family's dingy tenement apartment. After letting the authorities know of their experiences, a reporter literally moves into Lizzie's place after investigating the unexplained occurrences in the flat.
Occasionally the dialogue is completely incomprehensible. More often, the narrative was also. The acting was very good, but I fear the film was made for about two hundred pounds. And it shows.
It was marketed as a horror film, but it really isn’t. Sure, there’s supernatural activity, but as it’s never adequately explained and seems to be a somewhat incidental aspect of the story, I’d be tempted to categorise this as a Drama rather than a genre piece.
Poor Lizzie is a complicated, realistic character, but that doesn’t make her easy to watch. The whole film is grey and unpleasant, reminding us that the foremost reason we go to movies is to be entertained and find escape from the harsh, dull, and disagreeable details of our lives.
Tyranist might have been thrilled to see The Lord of the Rings’s Billy Boyd in a minor role, but he’s such a slimy, despicable character that it’s difficult to imagine him as the same simple and exuberant Pippin Took. The son of the greatest Scottish actor of all time, Jason Connery, appears as a tabloid photographer who initially tries to exploit the situation, then comes around to care for the family.
As in the great 1982 film Poltergeist, an investigative team of parapsychologists and students comes to the flat to see if they can document the supernatural activity. Their discoveries are a lot less spectacular (remember that part in Poltergeist where the researcher boasts about seeing a toy car move a couple of feet under its own volition over the course of hours? That seems to be the sort of thing real paranormal investigators would actually observe in their encounters). Which leads me to think about this film a little more than I was previously inclined. Perhaps it was based on an actual occurrance, or a newspaper article or something. After all, we are given a couple of explanations as to what the ghostly phenomena might have been, we see a faked photo of a ghost used in the report, some characters believe and some don’t, a medium is brought in to make contact with the spirits and after a lot of histrionics, we wonder if that all might have been faked as well. There’s a scene where one character pees, and when he flushes the toilet, disgusting brown water rises up from the bowl . . . was that ghostly in origin? The creaking of the pipes and sounds blamed on unruly youths . . . is that the rationale behind the occurrances? Was it all in Lizzie's head? Or caused by her emotional turmoil?
Of course, none of these questions are answered, and I stumbled away from this film tired, sad, and hopeful that one day soon, I would die.
Here's hoping, kids!
Posted: August 9, 2004

Total Skulls: 16

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears		Billy Boyd
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?