‘I can find no explanation at all…’
The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time goes back to the pagans and their belief that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest during the winter solstice. This tradition peaked in the Victoria era (Charles Dickens was exploiting an already beloved ritual when he released A Christmas Carol in December of 1843) before sadly falling away in more modern times. The BBC harkened back to the days of ghost stories at Christmas time with a series of eight supernatural short films every Christmas between 1971 and 1978. Now on its third revival, A Ghost Story for Christmas is currently under the stewardship of Mark Gatiss, with recent entry, The Room in the Tower, his eighth contribution. As ever, it’s a festive treat…
Adapted from E.F. Benson’s short story of the same name, The Room in the Tower begins in medias res in a bomb shelter during WWII. During a seemingly innocuous conversation, Roger Winstanley (Tobias Menzies) asks Vertiy (Nancy Carroll), a woman he has just met, if she has ever had a dream come true. Not an aspiration. A dream. Or a nightmare. Intrigued, Verity seeks clarity from her new companion. Roger goes on to explain that since he was a boy, he has dreamed of being asked to go for tea at the house of an acquaintance. Upon arrival, Julia Stone (Joanna Lumley), the matriarch of the family, informs Roger that there is a room ready for him at the top of the tower in a remote area of their stately home. With a slowly escalating sense of dread, Roger climbs the spiral staircase to the room, sees something horrible, and then wakes up. It’s a suitably spooky set-up, wonderfully sold by Menzies, who is one of the most consistent British actors currently working, and Gatiss, a writer-director always adept at creating an ominous sense of impending doom, does a great job in ratcheting up the tension.
As the dreams escalate in potency, The Room in the Tower builds to an unforgettable conclusion (although I could have done without the very final shot), and, as ever, Gatiss is incredibly effective at capturing the giddy sense of the uncanny that the combination of candles, howling wind and snowfall evokes in this country. While all of Gatiss’s entries in this series have a very similar feel about them, if you can tap into his frequency, there is always plenty here to enjoy.