"The Awakening" looks great but never develops a plot with enough clarity to engage us, and the solution to the mystery is I am afraid disappointingly standard. The real mystery is, what were the English thinking of when they built these scary stately homes and actually went to live in them? Better a cozy place in Hampstead Village, I say.

I have to say I found the final, colossal revelation to be contrived, but there are some nicely creepy moments, and director and co-writer Nick Murphy interestingly dramatises some of the neuroses feeding the appetite for ghostly phenomena – repressed sexuality, guilt and self-harm.

They say, the boy was scared to death. When the death of a child at a boarding school is blamed on a ghost, hoax exposer Florence Cathcart is certain that science and reason can explain it. But the truth she discovers is more terrifying than she could ever imagine, and soon the ghost hunter becomes the hunted.