Mark Gatiss returns with a chilling wartime adaptation of The Room in the Tower, delivering a haunting festive tale that blends eerie dreams with supernatural dread, writes RICHARD MARKWORTH
TITLE: The Room in the Tower
RELEASED: 10pm on 24 December 2025 on BBC2
DIRECTOR: Mark Gatiss
CAST: Joanna Lumley, Tobias Menzies, Polly Walker, Nancy Carroll, Ben Mansfield
Review of The Room in the Tower
With this 2025 entry to the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas, writer/director Mark Gatiss has now exceeded the legendary Lawrence Gordon Clark in his contributions to the series and, as Clark did in the 1970s, fully established the strand as a mainstay of seasonal television.
After last year’s Woman of Stone (2024), adapted from the works of Edith Nesbit, Gatiss has again chosen source material from an author new to AGSFC, this time selecting The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson.
Gatiss cleverly sets his latest offering within the milieu of World War Two, a time when true horror insinuated itself into everyday existence and genuine evil threatened the world.
This setting instantly adds a sense of danger to the piece and, indeed, the story opens to the sound of an air raid siren, serving to warn the audience they should not get too comfortable.
Middle-aged former soldier Roger Winstanley (Tobias Menzies) is sheltering in a tube station during the Blitz when he strikes up conversation with a Wren, Verity Gordon Clark (Nancy Carroll).
Whilst the pair wait anxiously for the Luftwaffe to cease terrorising the city above, Roger raises the subject of dreams and asks Verity whether she has ever had one come true.
Roger then recounts an experience for which he can “find no explanation” concerning a recurring nightmare which has plagued him intermittently since the age of sixteen.
The dream involves Roger arriving at the vast family mansion of a school acquaintance, Jack Stone.
Here he is met by the young man’s oddly silent family, headed by the sinister matriarch, Mrs Julia Stone (Joanna Lumley).
Roger is deeply unsettled by Mrs Stone and feels a sense of profound dread when she utters the line, “Jack will show you your room. I have given you the room in the tower.”
Roger then finds himself being led up a winding spiral staircase to said room, where he is traumatised by something uncanny beginning to manifest itself from thin air.
Mercifully, he awakens before he can observe the entity in its full form.
This nightmare would repeat sporadically throughout Roger’s life, with the family members seeming to age in conjunction with the real-life passing of time.
Although there are occasionally slight variations, the fundamental components remain the same, including Mrs Stone’s menacing line which Roger continues to hear spoken in her disembodied voice even after she has passed away.
Roger explains that back in the waking world a few years earlier, matters took a bizarre turn when he was invited to the home of his friend John “Jack” Clinton (Ben Mansfield), only to discover on arrival the family pile was in fact the mansion of his nightmares, complete with the fearsome tower looming over him.
Thankfully, John’s convivial family and fellow guests were a different breed to the ghastly Stone clan, and Roger found himself enjoying his visit.
That is, until Mrs Clinton (Polly Walker) informed him, due to the multitude of guests already staying at the house, she had given him the room in the tower.
After gingerly summiting the familiar staircase, Roger found himself in the dreaded wood-panelled chamber containing a “scarcely human” self-portrait of Mrs Stone, the previous owner of the house, facing the bed.
He expressed his discomfort to John, who offered to have the picture removed.
After he, Roger and a servant relocated the painting, they all noted smears of blood on their hands despite none being injured.
John was troubled by the mysterious blood and, brooding on the matter, advised Roger that the family dog would regularly stare through the French doors as if he could see “something out there on the lawn. Something bad.”
Roger goes on to describe the horrifying events that unfolded later that night in the tower.
After he has relayed the full tale, an astounded Verity asks Roger if the recurrence of the dream has ended.
Roger confirms this is so, but has his involvement with the fateful room truly been concluded?
The Room in the Tower proves an unnerving Yuletide treat for those who enjoy a frisson of spookiness during the festive season, with Gatiss crafting a tremendously creepy build-up to the final act.
The visuals are stunning, from the fisheye lens shots of the tower to the claustrophobic, shadowy environment of the tube station and the queasy, green-hued tones of the dream sequences.
The cast are all first-rate, although the wonderful Joanna Lumley is somewhat underused, and Menzies excels as the haunted Roger, attempting to comprehend his baffling and terrifying journey to a seemingly pre-ordained fate.
Roger’s plight feels particularly nightmarish, as he is an innocent victim of the supernatural rather than the typical series protagonist inviting otherworldly wrath through their own actions or curiosity.
He appears here an allegorical figure representing the Everyman entwined in the horror of war.
Although the story offers no definite conclusions, it remains a disquieting study of man’s helplessness at the hands of destiny.
Despite the climactic scare feeling a little forced, this chilling tale is an extremely engaging creeper and may just cause you to hesitate before ascending your bedtime stairs.
