Ghost Son

I was strolling through a flea market and found this DVD in a bin for 5 bucks. It looked interesting. I wasn't quite sure what the film had in store for me and I didn't pay attention to the cast, director etc as I would for most horror films. I just liked the cover art, which has gotten me into trouble in the past with notable bombs such as Brotherhood of Blood, ReVamped and other bad ones. I fall for the artwork.

This film, although slow and dragging in some spots, delivered some full fledged--top to bottom, spine chills. The "creep factor" in this movie scored with a bullet and had me squirming on my couch.

Admittedly, I knew little about the director of this film, but I knew that it had an Italian crew behind it and in my humble opinion, they did a nice job. It was just an unusual story and a well made film. My wife got up and walked out on it because it upset her and believe me, it will upset and scare you at the same time. A well shot, acted and produced film. Plus, the star of this movie was someone I had never seen before and my first impression was that she was a talentless hot bod. Wrong on the talentless aspect, right on the hot bod. She was convincing and a capable actor.

I give this film "7 hail Mary's."

"Ghost Son" is Lamberto Bava's best film and, at the same time, also his worst. I suppose that statement requires some slight clarification. It's his best because it's well directed, ambitious, accessible and very stylish, but his worst because it's a dull, unoriginal movie and undeniably a huge letdown to all the real fans of Bava's past efforts. Let's face it: many fans, myself certainly included, wouldn't have been interested in this film judging by the plot, the famous names attached to it and even the boring sounding title. The only motivation here was Lamberto Bava, who brought us large amounts of convoluted Gialli and fun splatter films in the past. "Ghost Son" is a bit of his comeback film, alongside "The Torturer", and although the latter definitely isn't a good film, it at least lives up to his fans' lines of expectations, with excessive amounts of sleaze, blood and sadism. "Ghost Son" is a weak and intolerably soft horror film, even talking in terms of mainstream ghost stories. The emphasis lies too much on sentimentality, and this badly affects the already limited number of horrific & creepily atmospheric moments. The basic premise might feature one or two potentially good ideas, but the film is overall dull and far too clichéd. John Hannah and Laura Harring star as a happy couple, living on a remote ranch in South Africa and breeding horses for a living. The joy and happiness couldn't possibly improve, so naturally something tragic is bound to happen, and it does. Mark dies in a car accident, but the inconsolable Stacey remains at the ranch where she's in constant contact with Mark's spirit. She even gets pregnant with his child, but shortly after baby Martin's birth mysterious events begin to occur. It seems as if Mark's restless and selfish ghost 'possessed' the baby and uses him to encourage Stacy into committing suicide. With all the focus on the couple's relationship, many of the events and sub plots are underdeveloped and/or remains unexplained, like the whole background of the youthful maid Thandi. There's too little action and the only real fright-moments are too obviously borrowed from classic films such as "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" (vomiting green goo, self moving furniture…). Purely talking in terms of horrific entertainment "Ghost Son" is a painful misfire, but it has to be said, it's a beautiful and enchanting looking failure. The cinematography is extremely elegant and many camera angles are truly inventive and suggestive. The moody score sometimes even manages to create an ominous atmosphere even though there's nothing of any significance happening on screen. There are several beautiful images of the South African wildlife to admire but, if that interests you, I suppose you're better off watching National Geographic instead. Not much to recommend here. Fans of atmosphere-driven ghost stories have much better options to choose from and die-hard Bava fanatics are advised to (re-)watch "Demons", "Macabre" or "Blade in the Dark".

Don't worry, it's not a sequel to Bill Cosby's 1990 flop GHOST DAD. It's actually a fairly interesting semi-remake of the director's late father (Mario Bava)'s final film, SHOCK (1977), released in the U. S. as BEYOND THE DOOR II (even though it had nothing to do with BEYOND THE DOOR). As in SHOCK, a young mother fears that her infant son is possessed by the spirit of its deceased father. She becomes increasingly hysterical as the child exhibits strange behavior that only she can see. That's about the end of the similarities between the two films, however. Whereas the original film was a creepy horror tale aimed squarely at scaring its audience, GHOST SON concentrates more on the problems of dealing with overwhelming grief and how coping with heartbreaking loss can cause a person to lose all objectivity. Thus this is a much more sad and depressing movie than the elder Bava's film, and while it has its share of grotesque moments, few will ever consider it frightening. For the first two-thirds of the film the baby threatens its mother's fragile sanity with incessant pointless screaming, a stubborn refusal to stay put and a habit of vomiting a torrent of horrid greenish slime directly into her face. In other words, it behaves exactly like any normal, ordinary baby. It's only when the little tot bites her breast hard enough to leave what appear to be teeth marks only days after its birth and starts periodically appearing as the image of its full-grown dad that the audience realizes something supernatural is going on. The heroine experiences frequent intense flashbacks to happier times and at one point imagines she's making love to a demonic version of her late husband. Were it not for a couple of isolated incidents, as when a little girl sees the baby speak in the father's voice (achieved via a superimposed moving mouth that gives the scene the unfortunate feel of those funny old "talking baby" Etrade commercials), the entire spiritual possession might be seen as a mere figment of the heroine's imagination. The family doctor tries to help but his main contribution to the plot is his participation in the single most uncalled-for "slap the hysterical female in the face" scene I've ever seen. The husband's sickening bone-crushing death in a road accident is almost unbearable to watch and the story's denouement, which requires the heroine to treat her lost love's spirit in a callous, borderline cruel manner in order to rescue their child, is far more tragic than scary. Still, it's nice to see anything like an Italian horror movie made in 2005 and Bava deserves a lot of credit for daring to give his story an honest-to-goodness ending instead of submitting to the illogical cheap shock conclusion that was tacked onto the vast majority of genre films of this period. Experienced horror viewers won't find much new in GHOST SON, but people who aren't accustomed to movies about ghosts and demons will probably find it intriguing enough.

First of all, I personally adore Demons and Demons 2, I saw them although it was hard to find good horrors without good official movie distributing here in Russia when I was a kid, and that is an unchangeable part of my boyhood. Then I heard nothing about Mr Bava. Then I saw his Ghost Son. Well, it is certainly not a good coming back! Why was the leading character, whom we never really knew to at least like him, in accident in the middle of an empty road? Why do African servants say so dumb and stupid things about human soul? Why is the plot so primitive? Haven't we seen enough ghosts for 100 years of movie production? It is clear that Lamberto Bava has nothing to show us so far. It is a shame.

Alas, it seems that the golden times of stylish Italian cinema have sunk into oblivion. And the recent brainchild of celebrated filmmaker Lamberto Bava is yet another obvious proof to that assumption.

I felt lucky to watch many films from this prolific director (like Body Puzzle, Delerium, Macabre and both Demons). Albeit not entirely satisfying they have never been that dull.

A suspicion that this new entry to my DVD collection was money thrown to the winds arose shortly in the aftermath of the car crash scene exhibiting an awkward and unlikely position of the body under the flip-over car.

And the sense of shallowness grew up in the course of the ponderously narrated chain of events that followed.

Dumb dialogs, suspenseless script and a total waste of talents from the international cast. The only character that provided more or less passable performance was the mischievous Mark's son juicing up the entire boredom.

Unfortunately, Mario's son job on all accounts could hardly be hailed.

I look forward to seeing his Murder House hopefully expected to be an improvement.