The Hounds Gate Haunting review – a ghostly critic lurks in the stalls in this suspenseful spooker

This mockumentary from low-budget horror veteran Richard Mansfield isn’t the most subtle take on the artist-critic relationship but it has a certain sprightliness

Where Quentin Dupieux’s 2023 theatre hostage-taking comedy Yannick pointed out that inside every punter is a critic, this no-frills British mockumentary suggests that if artists aren’t literally haunted by their reviews, then their inner critic might be just as deadly. It begins as a documentary crew arrive to chart theatre director Martin Beswick (Jonathan Cleaver) and his new production of MR James’s A Warning to the Curious at Nottingham’s Hounds Gate theatre (in real life, filmed at the city’s Arts theatre).

He’s getting to grips with his cast, mostly amateurs apart from egomaniac thesp Colin Collins (Matthew Hunt). One day during rehearsals, one of the auditorium seats suddenly flips up, is eerily cold to the touch and has pistachio shells scattered underneath. The old ham Colin seizes the opportunity for an old Hounds Gate tale: about Cyril Cobb, a legendarily vicious director who sat in that very berth to critique other productions – hence his nickname, “Stalls”. After dying in a freak pistachio-swallowing accident, he has now apparently become, Overlook Hotel-style, part of the furniture. Captured in spectral audio recordings, he is heard opining that this new staging is: “Not … good … enough!”