CHRISTMAS LEFTOVERS # 3 - MARTIN'S CLOSE (2019)

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Mark Gatiss based on the short story Martin's Close by M.R. James 

 

STARRING 

Peter Capaldi as Dolben

Elliot Levey as Judge Jeffreys

Wilf Scolding as John Martin

Sara Crowe as Sarah Arscott

James Holmes as Thomas Snell

Jessica Temple as Anne Clark

Simon Williams as Stanton

Fisayo Akinade as William

Ian Hallard as Hosier

PLOT - The year is 1684 - young aristocrat John Martin is on trial for the murder of a local peasant girl - Anne Clark, his trial is presided over by the infamous Judge Jeffries aka The Hanging Judge.

However things aren't quite as clear cut as they may first appear - someone who looks VERY like Anne Clark has been seen around the village and she's getting closer to John by the minute.

It's not the hanging judge that John has to fear...

PERFORMANCES - There's no clear cut central performance in this short film, instead it's more of an ensemble piece.

Headlining the cast is ex-Doctor Who Peter Capaldi - you can always count on Capaldi to deliver the goods (he's one of my favourite Doctors) and he's great here as the prosecutor - Dolben. Capaldi always has a really dour (and very Scottish) presence when he's onscreen and that's pretty much what he's doing here - being dour and Scottish. This is the sort of role Capaldi could do in his sleep and it works well here.

Perhaps my favourite character in this is Judge Jeffries (Elliott Levey) - he's hilarious, constantly dropping dark jokes about hanging in front of the terrified John. Jeffries was a real life historical figure and is noted for his "inappropriate" behaviour during many trials (he was apparently pissed out of his skull most of the time) and Levey captures this perfectly.

Then we get Wilf Scolding as the accused (and haunted) John Martin - ostensibly he's the main character. Scolding isn't an actor I've come across before but on the strength of this film he seems pretty good.

John Martin comes over not as an evil man at heart but rather just a clueless and thoughtless upper class fool. His actions of teasing the mentally handicapped Anne into making her think he's in love with her are cruel and callous, but you do get the impression that he genuinely means it as a harmless prank - the problem is that he doesn't know when to stop because he's simply not intelligent enough to know when he's gone too far (generations of interbreeding amongst the landed gentry will do that).

There's a bit of a question mark hovering over whether John did do the down and dirty with Anne - it's certainly implied. 

Anne is played by Jessica Temple, she gives a fairly convincing performance of the besotted but simple peasant girl, which soon turns creepy as hell when she comes back as a vengeful spirit, her echoing, out of tune singing itself is enough to put the willies up you and her awkward clumsy movements which are quite endearing when the character is alive take on a much more sinister aspect when she becomes a member of the walking dead.

Rounding out the main cast is Simon Williams as Stanton (aka The Narrator) who's a guy from the present day who narrates the story in a fourth wall breaking manner to us - the audience - at home. He's quite a genial host and I do love the traditional aspect of a ghost story being told next to a roaring log fire (preferably with a glass of something alcoholic), but it does seem weird to make him be from 2019, why not have Williams just play M.R

James, relating his tale on a cold Christmas Eve to a roomful of terrified colleagues and friends ? Maybe they thought a "modern" audience wouldn't take to it, or perhaps the budget just ran out and they couldn't afford anymore period sets or costumes. Who knows ?...

VIOLENCE - For a tale of murder and revenge from beyond the grave there's no actual violence depicted on-screen (it's told in the courtroom sequences that John Martin stabbed Anne to death and dumped her body in a pond, but we never see it happen), also - we never see John's eventual death by hanging, once more it's all told to us in an anecdotal way by the narrator.

This is fine, as this type of ghost story is more about atmosphere and dread than jump scares and gore anyway.

SFX - Anne's ghost is a great make-up job - she really does look like she's a water logged corpse that's started to decompose.

The BBC must have been quite proud of the way she looked too, as it's Anne's face that adorns the cover of the DVD release of the early Gatiss episodes.

RATING - Despite some strange stylistic choices (the present day narrator), this is yet again another solid entry in the series. Part court room drama, part fireside tale and part an exercise in atmospheric horror and psychological dread. Gatiss pulls it out of the hat once again.

4 undead peasant girls out of 5.

This was the last BBC Christmas ghost story for a while - the series went on pause the following year due to COVID. 

It returned in 2021 with Gatiss' adaptation of M.R. James' The Mezzotint and he's given us an annual festive fright ever since. That COVID related pause seems to be a good cut-off point for me covering the Christmas ghost stories for this year, but don't worry we've still got Gatiss' second cycle of tales to come but those are tales for another time....

Join me in a few days when I'll be looking at some winter themed horror movies as we descend into the final weeks of the coldest time of the year. See you then.