A few of them in the closet...

Skeletons
Starring: Ed Gaughan, Andrew Buckley, Jason Isaacs, Tuppence Middleton
Director: Nick Whitfield
Rating: 4 (out of five)

Summary: Davis and Bennett are a mismatched pair of psychic travelling salesmen in the business of cleaning "skeletons" from closets. Together they travel across Britain, wandering in and out of other people's lives, performing the "Procedure" whereby hidden secrets and lies are exposed...

Ironically, Skeletons is not a film that can be easily picked up and put in a genre box or wardrobe in this case. It's take on the well worn philosophical film narrative of letting go of the past to move on to a brighter future is high concept but lo-fi, with a supernaturally eccentric set of rules that make it a bittersweet live action counterpart to a Wallace and Gromit production.

As Davis (Gaughan) and Bennett (Buckley) plod along the hillsides and the disused railway lines of a desolate but very British land swapping their odd opinions on Rasputin's place in the annals of history and exposing lies with a mixture of goggles, fire extinguishers and "truth" detectors, you'll be worried director Nick Whitfield has blown his metaphysical wad too early on a unsuspecting audience who'll either be intrigued to see where the film is heading or be scratching their heads feeling confused by the whole experience.

In fact, stick with it and Nick Whitfield has written and directed something Spike Jonze would be proud of. Davis and Bennett experience their clients secret truths or delve deep into their own psyche by "glow chasing" via lost photos and addictive stones. During these scenes there are a multitude of POV shots that are akin to Being John Malkovich. In contrast, the real world is shown as such a pedestrian and bleak place it makes the hazy recollections in photos and inanimate objects, brought to life with colour and inventive camera trickery, even more alluring. You can understand why Davis would be addicted to delving into this world rather than facing the truth of his own drab reality.

Davies and Buckley have been likened to Laurel and Hardy but there's an element of short changing there. Certainly in terms of their physical performances, which are a mixture of regional accents, hunched walks and hang dog expressions, shows they're more than simple, slapstick cyphers. Davies especially, with his pencil moustache and drug like addiction to "glow chasing" gives a fantastic performance in unusual circumstances. He's just the right mixture of emotional pathos and little angry man lost.

As the film has been stretched from award winning short in award winning full length feature, it does have the occasional issues with pacing, and the sub plot of finding their new client's (Paprika Steen) lost husband lacks the emotional impact it's perhaps attempting to convey. Therefore Jason Isaacs juggernaut performance as The Colonel is a welcome addition to proceedings. With a handlebar tash left over from Green Zone and a scar across his neck, his performance lends a farcical air just as the film was starting to get lost inside its own rules and mythology.

A great success at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the film plays like the lost relative of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Frighteners and The Chuckle Brothers. Spanning the deadpan to the dead weird, it manages to intrigue the imagination and tickle the funny bone but occasionally struggles to leave any emotional ectoplasmic residue.