A View from a Hill (2005)

Directed by: Luke Watson | 40 minutes | drama, horror, thriller | Actors: Mark Letheren, Pip Torrens, David Burke, Simon Lunnell, Neil Findlater

This 2005 ‘A View from a Hill’ is the first of two ‘Ghost Story for Christmas’ films, made by the BBC after the 1970s ghost story series of the same name. Fanshawe who travels to a remote country house for work. Once there, the area immediately catches your eye. Deserted fields, the faint mists that hang over the vast valleys, the low sun, the falling leaves… it is a beautiful and glowing but also somewhat gloomy environment for things to come. But also a setting that is slowly becoming darker in nature due to the design and interpretation of what is not everyday to worrying matters that Fanshawe has to deal with. Its host’s deserted and secluded mansion, its repeatedly dimly lit spaces, hollow nighttime footsteps, strange hazy shadows, indefinable sounds both in the mansion and in the woods when Fanshawe is out alone, the bleak tale told by the Richards’ servant about the dark events that took place in the past in the area… These are things that are designed by director Watson in such a way that they lend themselves nicely, as was often the case in the ‘Ghost Story’ series of the 1970s. for the creation of an atmospheric ghost story.

In this story, however, mainly through an old pair of binoculars that Fanshawe borrows from Richards and through which he can see an abbey destroyed centuries ago both from afar and up close in detail. A simple, yet intriguing idea that particularly appeals to Fanshawe as a historian. He is less enthusiastic, however, about the shadow he sees moving through the binoculars in the abbey, in the relatively long-lasting form of indistinct glimpses and flashes of darting figures. Not overly explicit images, but their vagueness makes them all the more effective in evoking the necessary horror. Certainly when the shadow of the binoculars soon no longer pays much attention to Fanshawe with its unmistakable malicious intentions and actions at random moments. And when Fanshawe experiences the malevolent proximity and actions of the shadow first-hand, the restrained approach that director Luke Watson adheres to is also striking. He doesn’t let go of bloody scenes or related stuff – something that wouldn’t be appropriate given the approach of this production – but is all the more effective in the effect he achieves with it.

It is precisely the restrained and gradual build-up of the ominous events, the ever-closer proximity of the dark shadow within them, in combination with the slowly looming strangling certainty that its evil intentions cannot be avoided that ensure the creation of such an oppressive and dark atmosphere that this ‘A View From a Hill’ can be described as an effective ghost story in terms of horror. A condition for this is also the play of the cast members. Neat work by Mark Letheren as the young historian Dr. Fanshawe for whom the past is relived in a very literal and unenviable way. And which Letheren convincingly portrays in succession his curiosity, enthusiasm, unrest, fear and finally outright panic, not in the least by the facial expressions that he displays that match his state of mind. Solid work also by Pip Torrens as the somewhat haughty and bone-dry and therefore repeatedly slightly humorous appearing Squire Richards and by David Burke as his servant Patten. Disadvantages in the story are perhaps the somewhat too physically oriented climax of the story, given the ‘ghost story’ approach, and the somewhat too one-sided characters with regard to Richards and Burke, at least in comparison with the character Fanshawe. . Apart from that, this BBC film adaptation is a neatly crafted ghost story in its atmosphere and developments, one that is qualitatively reminiscent of the better parts of the ‘Ghost Story for Christmas’ BBC series of the same name from the 1970s and this knows how to do it.