The Awakening (15)

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Dir: Nick Murphy

With: Dominic West, Rebecca Hall, Imelda Staunton

THE clocks have gone back, the Downton Abbey cast is off to Magaluf for its holidays, and Middle Britain looks elsewhere for period thrills, tastefully done hamminess and drama with nobs in rather than knobs on. May we therefore recommend for your delectation The Awakening, an enjoyably spooky tale filmed in Scotland that should send chills all the way to the white cliffs?

If disappointment accompanies the delectation, blame forces outwith our control or, more accurately, the fact that the director is making his feature film debut. With a more ruthless touch and fewer twists, the final one-third of Nick Murphy’s story would have been less of a head-scratcher and more satisfying.

The Awakening stirs into action in London in 1921, a time when grief hangs heavy in the air. The First World War and the Spanish flu have combined to create a society in which death has come to the doorsteps of millions. It was a time, much as now, when mediums fleeced the desolate and the vulnerable, when people were only too willing to believe that their loved ones had not quite departed this Earth, not without one last message.

Murphy sets the tone with a scene at a seance that conjures up the desperation of the bereaved. All is bold brass and grim-as-the-grave mahogany. Sobbing mixes with anticipation. It is wonderfully creepy, a promising sign of shivers to come.

Opposed to all this stuff and nonsense is Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall), a young woman who would be called a ghostbuster had she known Bill Murray and lived in New York in 1984. As it is, Miss Cathcart is known as “an educated woman”, which loosely translates that she has read a lot of books, wears flat shoes and doesn’t gladly suffer foolish tales about ghosts. Her fiance had died in the war and, while she recognises the pain of loss, she regards tales of the hereafter as hurtful, dangerous nonsense that offends logic and prolongs the suffering of those left behind.

Hall has looked the part in modern pieces such as Frost/Nixon (as Frost’s girlfriend), Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Vicky) and The Town (playing the unsuspecting girlfriend of bad guy Ben Affleck). But there is something about those delicate, classical features of hers that lend themselves particularly well to British period dramas such as Murphy’s film and The Prestige. Her accent is pure English crystal, too.

Having dedicated her life to debunking the occult, Miss Cathcart cannot hide her weariness when a master from a boys’ boarding school in the north of England turns up at her home with tales of sinister happenings. Robert Mallory (Dominic West) is convinced something is amiss at the school and only she can solve the mystery. The sceptical miss heads north.

Among those delighted to see her is the school’s formidable matron, Maud Hill, played by Imelda Staunton. What a pity there is not to be an event in next year’s Olympics involving bustling, lip-pursing and freestyle frowning. Ms Staunton would trounce all comers. Here she is on fine form, herding the boys like a small auburn sheepdog and making sure Miss Cathcart has all she needs to do her work.

To say any more at this point would spoil the fun of the story. Murphy, who has helmed television series from Occupation to Primeval, is adept at setting a tale up and keeping it bubbling along in the middle section. Here, it’s the denouement that proves the hardest part to get right. How one feels about that rather depends on how clear cut you like an ending to be.

Filmed in Edinburgh and Berwickshire, Murphy’s film is shot in a clear, crisp style that suits its wintry nature. As he shows, the most terrifying events can take place not in the gloom of the night but in broad daylight, when the full horror of what is happening cannot be ignored.

Those who like their spooky tales to have lots of running down corridors and shadowy goings-on will find much here to delight in as most of the boys go home for the holidays, leaving only a handful of protagonists behind. If there’s one thing creepier than a dusty old school, it’s a near-empty dusty old school.

Mixing with the general Orphanage and The Others-style chilliness is a surprising eroticism as Cathcart finds herself becoming closer to the enigmatic but thoroughly gentlemanly Mallory. West, fresh from The Wire, playing Fred West and appearing as Shakespeare’s Iago at The Crucible, shows once again that there is no part that is beyond his ken or accent.

Written by Murphy and Stephen Volk (TV’s Afterlife), The Awakening shows there’s life left in the old ghost story yet. While it might ultimately disappoint, there’s enough here to keep you ever so gently shaken and stirred. The quintessentially English ghost story has found a fine Scots abode.