CHRISTMAS LEFTOVERS # 2 - THE DEAD ROOM (2018)

 

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Mark Gatiss

STARRING -

Simon Callow as Aubrey Judd

Anjli Mohindra as Tara Lohia

Susan Penhaligon as Joan

Joshua Oakes-Rogers as Paul

PLOT - Aubrey Judd is an old school thespian who is currently doing voiceover narration work for a radio horror show.

He's arrogant, opinionated and thinks the whole thing is beneath him...until he starts hearing the haunting melody of an old 1970's pop song and ghostly whispers echoing around the lonely sound studio where he works.

What is the cause of these ghostly sounds and what do they have to do with a tragic secret buried in Aubrey's past, long ago in the long hot summer of '76 ?...

PERFORMANCES - If you quickly scroll through this post you'll see that there's not as many stills from this film as I normally use in these reviews. 

The reason for that is that pretty much every still from the film just shows Simon Callow and Anjli Mohindra looking vaguely perturbed in a shadowy recording studio. Due to this you may think that there's not a lot to this little film, and it's true that the film is (more or less) a two hander carried mainly by Callow in his role of the pompous Aubrey and Mohindra as Aubrey's long suffering producer - Tara.

When you've got a two hander like this the whole thing stands and falls on the quality of the actors carrying the piece (doubly so if it's a claustrophobic ghost story), thankfully Callow and Mohindra are more than up to the task.

Callow is great as Aubrey - an ageing homosexual actor whose career has seen better days and is now stuck doing voiceover work for a late night horror radio show. Aubrey is bitter, pompous and incredibly stuck-up, you shouldn't like him at all and yet Callow brings out a sadness to the character, a vulnerability that makes him seem somehow more loveable.

Mohindra as Tara is also pretty likeable, you really feel sorry for this incredibly patient young woman who's stuck with having to deal with this crotchety old queen on a day to day basis, but (to her credit) she shows kindness and understanding to a man most people would probably quite happily kick.

As the story progresses we learn of Aubrey's guilty secret - he purposely failed to rescue his lover -Paul - from drowning in the summer of 1976. Aubrey was an ambitious young actor and Paul was being too clingy and threatening to "out" Aubrey if he didn't declare his love for him. Fearing what this revelation would do to his aspiring career Aubrey just watched Paul drown when he came into difficulty whilst swimming, rather than diving in to save him. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that it's Paul's ghost that's haunting Aubrey.

Callow plays the scenes where Aubrey is wallowing in his own guilt very well - it's quite an intense performance all round and really sells the meat of this particular ghost story. Oh..and I just love the moment where Aubrey describes one of the scripts he has to perform as "Whippet shit". The term whippet shit was coined by none other than Tom Baker himself when he was having a bad day filming an episode of Doctor Who, he infamously described the technobabble he had to learn as being "whippet shit" - Mark Gatiss once again showing his complete and utter Doctor Who geekdom with pride.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Well you've got Aubrey's love affair with Paul and Paul's subsequent death by drowning - but we never actually see these things, we only hear about them in hindsight.

SFX - We see Paul briefly in flashback and then eventually we see his ghost. Put it this way - ghostly Paul looks like he's been in the water for a loooonnngggg time - he's more of a zombie than a ghost. Unfortunately I can't find any pictures of him online, just take my word for it - it's a genuinely creepy piece of makeup work...

RATING - A change of pace for Gatiss' take on the BBC Christmas ghost story, as this time we get a tale set in the present day, whilst we had this in the original series back in the 70's (Stigma and The Ice House) for the contemporary run this is relatively uncharted territory (the Whistle And I'll Come To You remake notwithstanding).

It's a tightly paced, quiet little story that's well acted, claustrophobic and well worth a look.

4 pompous old queen's out of 5.

ART -