Our take
A Christmas Eve ghost story with a sting, from the author of The Railway Children. Celia Imrie's dying, smoking Edith Nesbit is a delightful narrator, Monica Dolan's housekeeper is wonderfully sinister, and Gatiss turns a Victorian tale of walking effigies into something angrier about men and the women they hurt. One of the strongest of the recent films.
What happens
In 1924 the author Edith Nesbit, in bed with the illness that will kill her and still glamorous and sociable, tells her young doctor, Dr Zubin, who has read only The Railway Children, one of her other tales, and puts him in it. Newlyweds Jack and Laura Lorimer, he a painter and she a writer, have taken a cottage in a quiet village to make a fresh start after some trouble in London. Their housekeeper Mrs Dorman tells them the legend of the village church, which no vicar stays at for long: two marble knights on their tombs are said to rise each Christmas Eve and walk to the cottage, built where their house once stood, to punish the wives they wrongly believed unfaithful while they were at war. Mrs Dorman has already guessed, before Laura's bruised wrist is seen, why the couple left London: Jack is controlling and cruel. Jack dismisses the legend as folklore, but as Christmas Eve comes he feels drawn to the church, leaving Laura alone in the cottage, and makes a terrifying discovery.
Can the kids watch it?
Rated 12 by the BBFC for moderate threat, violence and domestic abuse, so best for 12 and over.
Cast and crew
Starring
- Eanna Hardwicke as Jack Lorimer
- Celia Imrie as Edith Nesbit
- Monica Dolan as Mrs Dorman
- Mawaan Rizwan as Dr Zubin
Writer
- Mark Gatiss
Director
- Mark Gatiss