Score: 5/10
IMDb Score: 2.9/10

 

Tagline: The Soul Searching Begins!

 

Ghost Game tells the tale of two couples & close friends, Abbey (Shelby
Fenner) & Nate (Peter Cilella) plus Dara (Alexandra Barreto) & Randy
(Curt Cornelius) who decide to get together for a camping weekend. They
drive deep into the isolated forest wilderness where the Buckhorn River
Resort is located miles from civilization, the resort manager Simon
(Eric Woods) points them in the general direction of their cabin &
they're off. Sebastian (Aaron Patrick Freeman) along with his
girlfriend Talia (Danielle Hartnett) & an idiot named Cousin Ted
(Robert Berson) also turn up later on to join the party. Unfortunately
being stuck in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere without so much a
as Playstation can understandably become boring (a bit like watching
this film in fact) so they decide to do things the old fashioned way &
play a board game. They come across a metal box with what looks like a
game of some sort inside & despite the worrying 'Do Not Play This Game'
note inside they give it a whirl anyway. However they are unaware that
they have unleashed three ghosts, the ghosts of a coven of teenage
witches named Jessi (Sarah Shoup), Rachel (Caroline D'Amore) & Lucy
(Sahra Silanee) who died 30 odd years ago in a supernatural ceremony
that went wrong. As the friends start to die the survivors realize that
they must play the game to a complete finish if they want to escape
with they're lives...

Co-produced & directed by Joe Knee I thought Ghost game was average at
best & just another crap low budget shot on video travesty that clutter
video shop shelves at worst. The script by Benjamin Oren is slow,
fairly predictable, populates the film with highly irritating
character's especially Talia & has no conviction. As the friends drive
out to an isolated log cabin I was thinking The Evil Dead (1981)
crossed with a bit of Cabin Fever (2002) & when I saw the woods I was
also thinking that the filmmakers had recently seen The Blair Witch
Project (1999) along with Friday the 13th (1980) & it's fairly easy to
tell that these (& more besides) had an influence on Ghost Game, but
then it goes into a slightly different direction with all the
supernatural stuff & the game. Unfortunately it makes no real
difference as the annoying character's remain, the whole story when you
think about it doesn't make any sense, the horror aspects are
disappointingly tame & as a whole the film sucks, it's as simple &
straight forward as that. For some bizarre reason the IMDb jointly
lists Ghost Game as a comedy/horror, well I can tell you now that there
is no intentional comedy in this film at all & it takes itself 100%
seriously.

Director Knee obviously didn't have a big budget to work with & it
shows, Ghost Game has straight-to-video written all over it from the
cheap shot on video picture quality, the fact there's only about ten
people in the entire thing & only one location used throughout. There
is zero atmosphere, tension, scares or significant gore apart from a
bit when someone falls on a branch & is impaled on it through their
throat.

With a supposed budget of about $200,000 I can cut it a little bit of
slack but as a whole it's still bland, forgettable & dull. I ain't
surprised this went straight-to-video that's for sure. The acting was
OK but as I've said I found the teenage character's highly irritating &
I was sitting there hoping they would just all get killed & Ghost Game
would finish thereby putting me out of my misery. Having said that the
three goth girls who played the witches were pretty hot.

Ghost Game did nothing for me, it's slightly more original than a lot
of low budget rubbish, it's competent & it's not as bad as some of
these straight-to-video crap I've sat through but that in itself is no
recommendation. Watchable if your desperate.

Jumanji gone terribly wrong! Ohnoes! Go into this movie expecting a low
budget, but hopefully creative film. Dialog's pretty funny and
original. The acting is primarily very bad, but that's okay.

The male actors are in fact so horrible that they cannot even stay in
character or hold on to a believable emotion structure for even a few
seconds. The girls seem more believable overall. Alexandra Barreto was
hot as always [[smile]] The characters are fun, the dialog is funny,
sometimes so bad its fun.

I really liked the sundial concept that was pretty cool, more like a
moon dial, or egg timer for the dark wiccans of doom! AHH!!! "I thought
he was taking me to a spa..." That chick's death was pretty sweet.

The movie was very low budget, we knew that, but at least it keeps you
wondering what it's all about, which is more then I can say for a lot
of other horror movies, which made this movie at least enjoyable.

Sadly I think the people who rated this so low did so unforgiving of
low budget movies. yes some of the plot and character cohesion was
really bad. But conceptually, effect wise, music wise, honesty wise, it
was pretty fun and kept me wanting to know what the hell was going to
happen.

 

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