Contemporary films: Really good, traditional styled ghost stories? I loved The Others, and The Awakening.

"Topper" was one of the best.

I'm thinking of books or screenplays that are new but based on traditional ghost stories. I absolutely loved the complexity and twist a plot ending of The Others. It's on my top five list. I just recently saw The Awakening which was excellent. It's stars DominicWest (The Wire). I had a hard time figuring out who he was since the story and locations are sooo different. And Rebecca Hall who has a very strong stage/screen presence. It's set in England after WWI. During the height of the "Spiritualist" movement which sets the stage for a very fast paced but intriguing plot. I had to watch it twice to see how I'd been fooled. I saw it via Netflix streaming video. http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_Awakening/70208816?locale=en-US The Woman is Black was Okay but didn't quite make it for me. Kind of a "cat flying at you" film. I don't know. Of course I've read The Woman in White but it doesn't have the depth of these two later genre developments. I'm sick of zombies and blood and guts. I don't think of these as in the same category. I would love to see more of films like "The Others" and "The Awakening." In all honesty, I think probably The Others was the better film overall. It really was a brain teaser.

" I enjoyed The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe." I should have given you more credit for that one. It's exactly the genre I'm talking about. I just saw long ago and the end was different and the genre was based on traditional English ghost stories. My bad.

Wow that's an old old comedy. It's like Golden Age of Film stuff I'm talking about "traditional" ghost stories born of the English genre of the 19th and 20th century but written today.

Contemporary films: Really good, traditional styled ghost stories? I loved The Others, and The Awakening. Not the evolution of ghost stories to slasher films and modern horror but going back to the original "genre" and producing new, fresh, entertaining material.

There was a sub-genre where the ghost turned out to be friendly ("The Canterville Ghost," etc.) But the genre has so many limitations that "fresh" is very difficult; really, "Ghostbusters" was the last "fresh" ghost movie.

That's not Contemporary. It's not even a traditional ghost stories. It was another bit of comedy from the same era. Silly stuff not scary stuff without going into modern horror. Jeez Daniel. I'm trying to talk about movies made this century based on traditional scary ghost stories. You're not that old. I'm older that you are but I've seen new films.

The Others Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a devoutly religious mother of two ailing children who has moved with her family to a mansion on the English coast while awaiting her husband's return from World War II, though he has been declared missing. Their children, Anne and Nicholas both suffer both suffer from a rare photosensitivity disease that renders them extremely vulnerable to sunlight, prompting Grace's rule of having only one door open in the house at a time. When Anne begins claiming to see ghosts, Grace at first believes her newly arrived family of eccentric servants to be responsible.

Thanks for trying.