Urban Ghost Story review

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It's Poltergeist, Ken Loach-style. For her debut feature, Geneviève Jolliffe bends the creaking pipes and grimy walls of a dank Glasgow tower block to the needs of a ghost story, of sorts.

Heather Ann Foster gives a contained portrait of inner turmoil as 12-year-old Lizzie, who narrowly survives an accident that kills her best mate. She brings a dose of survivor's guilt back from her near-death and possibly something spookier too - driving her mum (Stephanie Buttle) to despair.

A tabloid hack (Jason Connery), gangsters, druggie single moms and sham clairvoyants all feature, but the script's too thin to support them all. Yet it's no bad chiller: clammy, fraught and bold enough to leave the hauntings ambiguous. Real scares, bogus realism.

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