Our take
A slow-burning nightmare told in a wartime shelter, with Tobias Menzies's quiet, haunted narrator drawing you in and Joanna Lumley a chilling presence in black. The recurring-dream idea is wonderfully unnerving, and the last act tips into proper horror. The Guardian warned that young children may well be terrified, which is the highest praise a Christmas ghost story can get.
What happens
It is 1944, and Roger Winstanley is sheltering from an air raid in a tube station, making small talk with Verity, a Wren. He asks whether she dreams, and whether her dreams have ever come true, and tells her the story he can find no explanation for. Since he was a schoolboy he has had the same dream: he arrives at the house of a schoolfellow, Jack Stone, and is led into the garden to take tea in silence with Jack's black-gowned mother and the rest of the family, until she tells him that Jack will show him to his room, and that he has been given the room in the tower. He is filled with terror, is left there, and always wakes before he learns what awaits him. Over the years the figures in the dream age, and later the mother is gone but her voice remains. Then Roger is invited to stay at a country estate eerily like the house in his dream, and is given the very same room. As the dream becomes real, he must face what is waiting in the room in the tower.
Can the kids watch it?
No BBFC rating found for this film. The Guardian's review warned it verges on horror and young children may well be terrified, so best for teenagers and up.
Cast and crew
Starring
- Tobias Menzies as Roger Winstanley
- Joanna Lumley as Mrs Stone
- Nancy Carroll as Verity Gordon Clark
- Ben Mansfield as John Clinton
- Polly Walker as Mrs Clinton
Writer
- Mark Gatiss
Director
- Mark Gatiss