Popular reviews

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  Review by cherryz ★★★

  Day 25. Horror movie that takes place in your city, state, province, territory, or country. Try to get as close to home as possible.

  Glasgow.

  That cover is gash!

  Its an alright UK telly ghostie tale with a side of dampened down trainspotting. I was expecting way less.

  There's some tidy experts, and that wee man loan shark is pure comedy! I cannie stop laughing whenever he says 'throw that wee bitch aff the balcony'.

  Most importantly I had a wee tear at the end.

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  Review by LAckerman ★★½ 7

  I assume most people haven't heard of this 90s stab at the horror genre from the United Kingdom, in which a troubled teenage girl comes back to life following an accident only to bring a supernatural entity with her.

  'Urban Ghost Story' is an unusual combination of traditional haunted house mystery and social realist melodrama set in a decaying Glasgow tower block. It's a great salt-of-the-earth location where you can practically see and smell the mould growing up the walls. There is no Hollywood gloss here. The whole thing is played dead straight with a fairly believable cast of Scottish actors who really help to sell the authenticity of the working class environment and, by extension, make the supernatural premise…

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  Review by Scott Clark ★★★★

  For the 6 countries part of HOOPTOBER I've again included a Scottish horror film in the mix: Genevieve Jolliffe's Glasgow-set Urban Ghost Story. 

  Set in a derelict tower block, Urban Ghost Story paints a miserable picture of life in a 90's council estate for a troubled mother, her infant son, and her daughter who has recently survived a terrible car crash which killed her friend. 

  Jolliffe clearly has a lot to talk about, and though I'd hold off calling it a "feminist" film, its a story led by female characters and the specific issues they face. The trap of teen pregnancy, cycles of violence, gaslighting, and not least the threat men can pose. On top of all that there's social…

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  Review by Colin Rudge ★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  An OK film but nothing too memorable either. It is a Scottish set film that is mashing up gritty social realism with poltergeist activity.

  The first half of the film is very much Ken Loach-light as the 14 year old daughter had been involved as a passenger in a joyriding event which ended up with the car wrecked and bursting into flames, killing the child driving. (Strangely, because this all takes place to a soundtrack of classical music, it feels very similar to the joyriding segment from the opera film Aria!). We move forward and the single mother of the family is struggling to keep things together against brutal rent collectors (not as bad as those in Loach's Raining Stones,…

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  Review by Calum Iain MacIver ★★

  Low budget piece of grubby social realism set in a Glasgow tower block that spends a bit of time masquerading as a horror film.

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  Review by Andrew Pope ★★

  Truly weird Glasgow-set attempt to do “Ken Loach’s Poltergeist.” Those two registers might work in the hands of a master, but here they’re like oil and water. As such, it’s somehow amusingly rubbish, a bit boring, and genuinely unsettling all at once. Stars Jason Connery and Billy Boyd, together at last. Picks up at the end with a pretty great set piece, mind - if you have vertigo it'll get your attention.

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  Review by TurloughKelly ★★★½

  The 1990s was a grim period for horror cinema. An era of false certainties produced little in the way of genuine insight or innovation within the horror genre (or, frankly, anywhere else).

  Urban Ghost Story stands as one of the very finest horror movies of the 1990s; but by no means should the film be damned with such faint praise.

  Its script adroitly transposes the possession narratives and high-tech ghost hunts of American horror to the unfamiliar locale of a Glasgow tower-block.

  Twelve-year-old Lizzie Fisher is classic poltergeist fodder; troubled, unsettled at home, haunted by a barely repressed trauma. The ensuing ghostly phenomena may be familiar, but seldom have they seemed so well-founded.

  Whereas The Exorcist's well-heeled MacNeill family could…

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  Review by DylanDoorsFan ★★★½

  Urban Ghost.

  7/10.

  Seeing a number of women directed Horror films lists recently,I decided to dig deep into exploring a list. Stumbling on a British Horror that had come out on DVD which I had never heard of before,I got set to encounter this urban ghost.

  View on the film:

  Making his movie debut after two TV appearances, Billy Boyd gives a very good performance as a loan shark, whose aggressive roughness heightens the fear that the family are already living under.

  The lone film credit she has currently, Heather Ann Foster gives an excellent, layered performance as Lizzie, whose nightmare visions she has experienced since dying for 184 seconds, is placed by Foster in the chilling ambiguity between the…

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  Review by Gavin Rye ★★★

  I always love it when a film really captures what Britain actually looks like rather than the Guy Ritchie style filter we usually see it through and Urban Ghost Story’s tower block setting is very much on point. The flats even look the part with many of them having no carpet and just a TV slapped right in the middle of the room. It took me back to a lot of friend’s places when I was a kid.

  Urban Ghost Story actually plays out more as a family drama than it does a horror film. Though there are horror elements, It’s more about young girl Lizzie, who is dealing with the guilt of surviving a car crash that killed a…

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  Review by TheGothicAlice ★★★

  In some ways plodding and slow (and looks terrible mostly due to its tiny budget and made-for-tv style) it’s still an interesting simmer of real or fake haunting and the manifestation of guilt, particularly in a grimy and bleak urban projects setting.

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  Review by Melody ★★★★

  There’s a lot more to love here than I expected there to be, god knows how long since I last saw it. Back then I only wanted to see it because it had Nicola Stapleton in it, who I’d sorely missed since she left Eastenders in 1994 (maybe the reason I thought of it again was ‘cos I spent about an hour a day from March-June watching the repeats of her episodes on UK Drama… I’m not even a soap fan but those years, like the Julie/Debbie Martin years in Neighbours, were an exception…) but I ended up devouring the extras which were very concerned with indie film making, which was something I hoped I’d end up doing (I still…

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  Review by MDF ★★★

  Unique little Scottish film that mixes a ghost story with gritty realism. The result is often naturalistic with occasional stylizations that feel very 90's, but not all bad. The story tells of a troubled girl who seems to have poltergeist activity surrounding her after a car accident kills her friend and nearly herself.

  The film unfolds a little bit like the story of the Enfield Poltergeist, with the outcast of Pan's Labyrinth, and a hint of the Sixth Sense taking place primarily in a Glasgow ghetto high rise apartment building.

  I thought the film started very strong with some genuinely creepy, albeit simple scares. Unfortunately as time goes on the film overstays it's welcome and feels somewhat protracted by the end.