One Paragraph Movie Review: The Phantom Carriage

Two hundred and ninety-third film: Korkalen, Swedish for ‘wagoner’ but called ‘The Phantom Carriage’ with English subtitles. A silent film seemingly sponsored by the Salvation Army, it tells the story of David Holm, a violent drunk who dies at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve and is therefore doomed to pick up the souls of the dead for a year driving Death’s carriage, or as I’m calling it: Uber Deceased. Very, very much about morality, this has side-notes of being, probably, the first horror film and a direct influence on future depictions of death, future depictions of ghosts leaving bodies, future depictions of ghosts using flashbacks to show people how and where they messed up, and future depictions of crazy blokes hacking through doors with an axe to terrorise their wives and children. The ghosty bits — including a rickety, properly spooky carriage with emaciated horse — are genuinely creepy, achieved using then-groundbreaking double exposures and bloody fantastic lighting. The virtue message is as trowelled on as the melodramatic facial expressions, but ghost horse limped into my heart. Two and a half wasted coat-mending evenings out of five.