I first heard about this movie in an article I read in the publication Cemetery Dance and had been looking for it ever since. I have to say, it really wasn't what I was expecting when I rented it. In my opinion, this movie centers more upon an adolescent girl's ability to deal with guilt/grief from a horrible auto accident than upon any poltergeist/demon or ghost (if there ever even was one...) The acting was descent, and the arrangement of the film was such that it kept you interested and waiting for something to happen, but as far as delivery, I felt a little let down. While I am the first to agree that the less you see of a monster, the scarier it is, In this case there just really didn't seem to be much haunting going on. Some wraps at the door, a dresser being moved (maybe) and some noisy pipes are about all we got. I thought there was a lot of potential for this film to be better by tying it in with the girl's trauma, but no conclusion was ever really made. Was it real? Was it not? For those of you who have seen Emily Rose, you know what I'm talking about. Perhaps I was just in the mood for a film where there was more of a paranormal climax than a psychological one. Not that it was a bad film, but with a title like Urban Ghost Story, I had expected a little more spook for my buck.

Is there a ghost here, or maybe not? That question is left unanswered, and left as a possibility either way. The girl who's the center of the controversy is a kind of teenage version of Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls, and it seems possible that she might meet a similar fate, and indeed nearly does. The movie starts off slowly enough and it is hard to become involved, but when the paranormal investigations begin and the medium (noun here) arrives, by then it's engrossing. A nice examination of the various groups who take advantage of the folks who suffer paranormal activity, the tabloids, the parapsychologists, the séance types, all in it for their own gain and treating the "victims" as objects of study, not as people. If this is what the filmmakers intended to show, they were successful. If they were trying to create tension, they were partly successful, and if they wanted to make it a true Urban Ghost Story, they were barely successful. Not recommended for those who really like chills and scares, there are some, but not enough. But recommended for those who'd like a thoughtful examination of the society around paranormal activity.

When urban ghost story is mentioned stuff like Candyman etc. spring to mind so I was perplexed when I saw this little gem from Scotland recently.The content and atmosphere of the film does not adhere to the title whatsoever. You would be expecting Snoop Dog and Dr Dre driving around in cadillacs killing vampires. But no, instead a gritty Ken Loach style drama set in lovely Glasgow! I was very impressed overall by this effort, although the spiritualist and paranormal team from the university seemed a bit over the top with the more realistic view elsewhere. Otherwise it was neatly paced with a few creepy moments and a very moving score. I would recommend this film to any film watcher and not just paranormal junkies!

What I thought I was watching when I saw this movie was an effort at a case study of an unhappy adolescent girl in a dingy Scottish slum, whose unhappiness is accompanied by a spate of poltergeist activity, perhaps caused by her, but not by a ghost as usually understood, and presented as a secondary aspect of her general condition rather than as the point of interest in itself. That seemed an unusual approach, but I found it hindered by the casting of the main actress, who is remarkably inexpressive even for a surly adolescent; by distracting effects and music; and by the script, which is constructed so as to hold back rather than reveal key information about the character, and which, rather than limiting itself to her, the people around her, and the events that would be likely to happen in the circumstances, ropes in several not very credible characters who mainly get in the way of the main subject. Though the movie was not very scary, its attitude, more than its eye, and its location (as I thought, but this turned out to have been a well-designed set), more than imaginativeness in its use, drew me in and carried me along. But I wish it had taken me farther, faster.In the commentary on the DVD, the producer and co-writer explains that the film was not intended as the character study I had supposed but as a "real" (as opposed to a Hollywood) ghost story, dictating the urban setting (and the prosaic title), and was intended to capture the effect of sitting in a haunted house for hours without hearing anything and then hearing a small sound. Thing is, though, this effect has been a staple of horror movies since the coming of sound, it has been done more effectively in many; also, most ghost movies I have seen recently have had urban settings. The filmmakers have talent, but in my opinion their film would have gained if they had viewed, or imagined, a little more widely (their favorite movies are "Aliens," "Star Wars," "Die Hard," and "Back to the Future"), written a little more to the purpose--and done what I had thought they were doing.