Our take
A glittering half-hour of rising unease from a picture that will not keep still. Rory Kinnear is perfect as the polite, rational curator, Frances Barber steals scenes as a garrulous vicar's wife, and the moving engraving is a beautifully simple device. One of the most purely enjoyable of the Gatiss films, and an ideal Christmas Eve chiller.
What happens
In the early 1920s Edward Williams, a gentleman and amateur golfer, is curator of a small university museum, spending his days politely declining unsuitable gifts from local ladies. A dealer sends him an engraving, a mezzotint, of an unidentified manor house, its label torn. It looks ordinary, until his friend Binks admires the moonlight and a figure at the edge that Williams had not noticed. The picture keeps changing: a cloaked figure with a skull-like head and horribly thin legs crosses the moonlit lawn towards the house, a window opens, and the figure reappears carrying what may be a child. Williams, who in his spare time is chasing parish records for a family mystery in Essex, enlists his colleague Garwood and the garrulous Mrs Ambrigail, a vicar's wife and amateur palaeontologist, whose tales of infants, poachers and local lore reveal the tragedy the engraving is replaying, and a sin visited on a man's descendants.
Can the kids watch it?
No BBFC rating found for this film. It is creepy rather than gory, with a frightening figure and a tragedy involving a child, so best for older children and up.
Cast and crew
Starring
- Rory Kinnear as Edward Williams
- Robert Bathurst as Garwood
- Frances Barber as Mrs Ambrigail
- John Hopkins as Binks
- Emma Cunniffe as Mrs Filcher
- Nikesh Patel as Nisbet
Writer
- Mark Gatiss
Director
- Mark Gatiss