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GHOSTS OF WAR
Director: Eric Bress Cast: Brenton Thewaites, Theo Rossi, Kyle Gallner, Skylar Astin, Alan Ritchson, Billy Zane, Shaun Toub, Matthew Reese, Laila Banki MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:34 Release Date: 7/17/20 (virtual cinema; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 16, 2020 In retrospect, one can tell that writer/director Eric Bress is banking on the big twist for the ultimate success of Ghosts of War. The final revelation here, though, is as preposterous as the rest of the movie is generic. Most of this story is set in waning period of World War II, as a squad of American soldiers is assigned to guard a chateau in the French countryside. Until recently, the mansion was headquarters for some Nazi officials, but it has been abandoned. After a brief tour of violence and devastation, leader Chris (Brenton Thwaites) and the squad—non-descript Kirk (Theo Rossi), psychologically unbalanced sniper Tappert (Kyle Gallner), smart guy Eugene (Skylar Astin), and brawny Butchie (Alan Ritchson)—arrive at the house. The soldiers they're relieving are quite eager to leave. The place, we and the characters quickly learn, is haunted by the spirits of the original owners, who were massacred by the Nazis. After a couple nights there, the replacement squad is ready to bail, too. Bress allows all of this to play out as predictably as possible. The squad members encounter a lot of strange noises, disembodied voices, and visions of death. There is, at least, no attempt at obfuscation. The soldiers realize and accept what's happening pretty quickly. The bulk of the plot features a slow dissemination of the massacred family's history, as the squad discovers clues about who they were, how they died, and why their ghosts are sticking around. For a while, it only feels like a hollow justification for the movie equivalent of an amusement park attraction, especially considering how the ghosts are positioned perfectly for a series of cheap jump scares (waiting for the camera to move or for a quick cut, with pale faces stuck in a silent scream). Bress annihilates his simple but formulaic premise at the climax, which rolls out one head-scratching development after another. Without giving it away, the explanation for what's happening to the squad makes so little sense that even the characters themselves don't seem to buy it. That doesn't stop the screenplay from having a couple of those characters clarify all of the supposed hints Bress scattered throughout the story. This just feels like boasting on the filmmaker's part. It's completely unearned, too, because Ghosts of War doesn't work as a horror story and really doesn't work as a mind-bender. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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