John August’s bijou thriller The Nines is a trilogy of back-to-back ghost stories with unexpected links. The same three actors play different characters in stories that hinge on the sanity of Ryan Reynolds. In the first chapter, the young actor plays a likeable TV soap star who has a nervous breakdown. He sets fire to his home, swallows a cocktail of bourbon and drugs, and ends up under house arrest to avoid prison. His manic PR, played by Melissa McCarthy, is far more interested in shielding him from the mysterious truth about himself, than she is about keeping him out of trouble.

In the second story, Reynolds, now a TV writer, dumps his best friend and main star (McCarthy) to further his career. In the third story, he plays a bearded family man who runs out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and leaves his wife (McCarthy) and child in the car while he searches for help. Small clues in each story hint at the idea that Reynolds is the unsuspecting, and all-powerful, “author” of all three of these scenarios. The subtle humour and tense drama is that he hasn’t woken up to this surreal fact. The film puts a delightful spin on that profound and solipsistic idea that we are the godlike inventors, and moral arbitrators, of our own little worlds. A gem.

Certificate 15, 99 mins

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