Where Quentin Dupieux’s 2023 theatre hostage-taking comedy Yannick pointed out that inside every punter is a critic, this no-frills British mockumentary suggests that if artists aren’t literally haunted by their reviews, then their inner critic might be just as deadly. It begins as a documentary crew arrive to chart theatre director Martin Beswick (Jonathan Cleaver) and his new production of MR James’s A Warning to the Curious at Nottingham’s Hounds Gate theatre (in real life, filmed at the city’s Arts theatre).
He’s getting to grips with his cast, mostly amateurs apart from egomaniac thesp Colin Collins (Matthew Hunt). One day during rehearsals, one of the auditorium seats suddenly flips up, is eerily cold to the touch and has pistachio shells scattered underneath. The old ham Colin seizes the opportunity for an old Hounds Gate tale: about Cyril Cobb, a legendarily vicious director who sat in that very berth to critique other productions – hence his nickname, “Stalls”. After dying in a freak pistachio-swallowing accident, he has now apparently become, Overlook Hotel-style, part of the furniture. Captured in spectral audio recordings, he is heard opining that this new staging is: “Not … good … enough!”
Low-budget horror veteran Richard Mansfield serves up the sprightly shaky-cam idiom easily enough – but his ghost story initially flounders for direction. As his proxy Ben roams the theatre’s corridors with his camera, we hang speculatively with this rather generic-seeming band of players: agent-bothering windbag Colin (a touch overplayed, ironically, by Hunt); prank-loving theatre manager Alex (Luke Willis); part-time sales rep Jessica (Rosanne Priest), constantly trying to dragoon the others into flogging her Tend & Tonic beauty range; set designer Cassie (Lara Drew), who uncovers more Cobb memorabilia.
They seem more like types than developing characters – with the exception of Martin, whose insistence that Stalls is a ruse for one of the cast to wreck his play masks his insecurities. Mansfield’s film at last digs in thematically on the perennial creative fear of mediocrity; not the most subtle tack on the artist-critic relationship, but enough grounding for a reasonably suspenseful spooker, as Cobb’s manifestations cause the chippy director to unravel. The scant character work is further exposed by the abruptness of the final twist, but The Hounds Gate Haunting keeps up a definite game zeal throughout. “Not … Too … Bad,” as the voice from beyond might have it.
• The Hounds Gate Haunting is available now on digital platforms.
