The Demonic Doll (UK 2018: Dir Richard Mansfield)

The last of Richard Mansfield's micro budget horror films set in London (the director has now relocated to Nottingham), The Demonic Doll continues his trend for luridly titled movies which are in reality much more subtle than their names suggest. This one is a kind of sequel to his last year's The Demonic Tapes; it's even set in the same house (although a different location but the same borough), turning Haringey into an north London version of Amityville.

Rose is a separated mother of two having a couple of weeks on her own while the kids are at dad's. She's trying to get her life together after the split, and is doing some work for the local church magazine, so one assumes there might be a spiritual side to her - there are crosses on the walls of the house. In the same way as the unnamed sole male occupant of the previous film, Rose also discovers a tape recorder plus a spooky antique doll while rummaging around in the basement. And like the previous incumbent, she starts listening to the tapes obsessively. They record sessions with a little boy called Simon, supposedly possessed by a demon, who talks of a malevolent spirit called 'socks' and also 'Mr Sheets.' Rose also finds that the doll she retrieved mysteriously moves itself around the house, and she also half glimpses a cloth swathed figure which also follows her - could it be the same spirit talked about by Simon? Father Matthew from the local church provides support to Rose but is initially not convinced that she isn't making things up. But we know the London semi and its ghostly occupants mean business.

You have to hand it to Richard Mansfield. He does have the ability to create a chilling hour and a bit of screen time out of shadows, some nifty camerawork and some effective sound design (score again enigmatically produced by the mysterious 'Pig 7', and if the anonymously credited musician also turns out to be Mansfield I'll be very envious). The Demonic Doll, perhaps even more than its predecessor, looks to BBC TV's Ghostwatch for its suburban thrills - the director has even stolen that programme's subversive behind the curtains stunt - and as the camera moves stealthily around the house, the viewer is constantly on the lookout for something supernatural at the edge of the frame, catching little details like upturned crosses and mysterious messages. Mansfield doesn't really go in for big jumps, although the score, with its distinctive Mica Levi style shrillness, suggests this might happen.

Castwise this is basically a two hander, Rose being played by Jennie Fox, doing a good job to convince as a middle class mum slowly realising that her home is a haunted house. Confusingly Mansfield regular Darren Munn, who was the stalked man in the same house in The Demonic Tapes, returns here as Father Matthew. But apart from that it's just glimpses of people and disembodied voices on tape.

Look, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, and a certain amount of 'adjustment' is required to view this as conventional entertainment. But I like what Mansfield does with a camera, I applaud his chutzpah, and he's clearly having fun. But I'm slightly relieved that the Haringey horror franchise has ended with the director's move out of London; however I am keenly looking forward to what comes next - maybe a series of Nottingham Nightmares? And you can have that title for free Richard.

The Demonic Tapes (UK 2017: Dir Richard Mansfield)

You're never that far from the gothic or the classic ghost tale with Richard Mansfield's work, whether he's giving us faithful adaptations of M R James stories via his shadow films, or contemporary live action movies containing more than a whiff of classic supernatural fiction.

In 2016's Video Killer urban paranoia loomed large among strange visions and spectral followers. The rather luridly titled The Demonic Tapes - a title which perhaps unfairly masks a much more subtle film than that - is also set in contemporary London, and was filmed very quickly over a three day period on a budget of about £400.

The Demonic Tapes is the supposedly true story of an unnamed man, staying alone in a north London house share in the days leading up to Christmas, who discovers a box of audio cassettes in the basement. These tapes record a series of sessions involving a medium and a former resident of the house. Our current resident listens to the tapes increasingly obsessively, and realises fairly quickly that the haunting documented on them - and the death of the medium on the tapes - has taken place in the same house in which he's currently living. As the cassettes' hold on him deepens, he starts to see and hear things in the rooms upstairs, suggesting that the demonic presence caught on tape may be back in the house.

A nightmarish image from The Demonic Tapes

Perhaps befitting the brief shooting time The Demonic Tapes didn't have quite the same impact that the more ambitious Video Killer had when I first saw it. But I have to congratulate Richard Mansfield on conjuring something interesting out of not much at all; whether it's tricksy camera shots - from within a kettle and bath while being filled, for example (very giallo) - or the use of the crumpled animated bedsheet twitching on the floor or rising slowly from bathwater (a nod to the BBC version of the M R James story Whistle and I'll Come To You). And the pre Christmas time setting (announced in a series of title cards) is surely a reference to the classic 1973 film The Legend of Hell House which uses the same device.

"I feel like I'm listening to something I shouldn't be" says our doomed hero at one point (carefully underplayed by Darren Munn), and there's a palpable sense of unease generated by watching the man passively listening to the recording of a sustained haunting (complete with Ghostwatch style disturbing voices). Although largely unseen Alice Keedwell is also convincing as the voice of the medium on the tapes - she also plays her sister Sarah in a brief scene. Aided by an extremely atmospheric soundtrack by the enigmatically titled 'Pig 7' - with help from Mansfield and former Video Killer actor Victoria Falls - The Demonic Tapes creates what is becoming a trademark urban horror feel from the director, but with the 'onion skin' approach to storytelling adopted by M R James, to whom Mansfield remains indebted.

The Demonic Tapes is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.