Ghost Son

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.

Now this, I really consider to be Lamberto Bava's international comeback-movie (instead of his previous lower budget effort, THE TORTURER, in 2005). You gotta hand it to the man: Coming back to the theatrical world of horror with an Italian/South African/Spanish/British co-production. And you know what? To my utmost surprise, it's even pretty decent (I saw this one before I saw THE TORTURER later this week, so you can imagine how unpleasant a surprise the latter was….). It's even hard to believe that GHOST SON and THE TORTURER were both directed by the very same director.

GHOST SON looks great! The cinematography looks astonishing. And Bava really took the time to direct this one. And he clearly had a very comfortable budget to work with (it always helps to have the money to afford a capable and talented crew). Almost every shot in this movie has movement (travel-shots, letting the camera slowly and stylishly turn around the actors, crane shots,….). It was a lust for the eye to see Bava finally being able to show his more technical directing skills again.

The story, on the other hand is a hit and miss deal again. I liked the fact that Bava is giving us a different take on your average ghost story. But while the movie manages to be effectively scary at some points, it also had quite some ridiculous, but highly entertaining events in it (a baby with a boner biting his mother's boobie????). Nevertheless, these events, to me, were extremely fun to watch (still too bad they damaged the over-all 'seriousness' of this movie a bit, though).

All-in-all, Ghost Son is a slow mover, but story-wise it did managed to keep my interest because I wanted to know to where it would all lead to, eventually (just don't expect any exciting twists or surprising conclusion to it because the denouement isn't exactly a spectacular climax). In a world filled with horror-movies containing derivative surprise-twists at the end, Ghost Son manages to simply avoid that trap. Rather rare these days, I'd say. But it was really the more than decent cinematography and Bava's skill-full directing that kept my going through this movie. Well, it even has more merits, of course. Like the good acting by Laura Harring and the adequate musical score. Not to forget Pete Postlethwaite's noticeable presence in this one.

I'm fully aware of the fact that a lot of people might not like this one as much as I did. Some people even might say THE TORTURER is a better movie. I say: Don't believe them, because it's not... but that's totally up to you, of course.

If you read the blurb for this movie, either here at IMDb or on the back of the dvd, well, that's exactly what you get. What it doesn't tell you is how an apparently all up decent hard-working bloke suddenly becomes somewhat evil straight after death. You'll scratch your head over that one. As a movie premise it is original. Does it work? It didn't for me. There is a vision to this movie. The soundtrack, for example, would have been creepy and perfect, had the story been believable. I question the casting of the two leads as well. John Hannah is usually good in movies and TV, but in this he seems out of his depth, though not as much as Laura Harring. Her whole character, as well as her performance, just seemed wrong to me. Too much perfect makeup for an African farmer's wife, and just too slow off the mark to convince me whenever called to action. The horror elements seemed cobbled together from several other movies, which included the frequent brave camera angles. Maybe in 2007 all this was new enough to pass muster. If so, the movie has aged. There's problems with the storyline as well. Why is a woman babbling to a responsible doctor that her husband is still around and appearing to her still allowed to care alone for an infant? That one is explained by a weird spiritualism, painted as specific to Africa, that everyone believes in. That aspect of the movie is not convincing either, as there's very little side notes or cinematography to go with it, just a few lines from the local grandma. I didn't mind watching the movie as, because of its brave concept, it intrigued me when it didn't work. I enjoyed trying to figure out why, and I enjoyed trying to give it the benefit of the doubt. Ghost Son is a weird movie. If you really enjoy weird movies, and brave concepts for horror, then you may find more to enjoy in this than I did.

For fans in the know, it isn't exactly too much of a statement to say that Italian horror is far from where it used to be. Between the 60's and mid 90's, there was a plethora of excellent horrors and gialli coming regularly out of pasta land. Sadly, this situation has long ceased to be the case and we now simply have to make do with pretty slim pickings. The director of Ghost Son, Lamberto Bava, was very much an 80's man, delivering several very enjoyable movies in this decade, probably the best of which being the cult classic Demons (1985). But since those halcyon days, like many of his contemporaries, he seems to have got swallowed up by television productions and only rarely delivers any feature films. I guess his comeback movie in this area was The Torturer (2005), a film which I can't say I thought too much of. It did provide a few sleazy thrills but overall it could not escape its bargain basement origins. With Ghost Son, Bava is clearly operating with a much improved budget, allowing him to hire name actors like Laura Harring, John Hannah and Pete Postlethwaite, while also allowing for on location shooting in South Africa and a team behind the lens who have ensured that the movie does look good enough. Set in South Africa, a woman loses her husband in a car accident and then his ghost returns and impregnates her from beyond the grave. Once her son is born she is convinced he is convinced by a malevolent spirit.

While it was good to see Bava tackle something with a bit more to it that The Torturer, the main gripe with this one is that it is overall a bit dull. You have to think that a film involving ghosts and voodoo occult has the potential for a few interesting ideas and set-pieces, the truth is that the movie is very by-the-numbers. Nevertheless, it was good to see Harring - one of the stars of my favourite film ever, Mulholland Drive (2001) - get a starring role and it was also good to see Bava getting to helm something with a bit of money behind it. It was a bit so-so, however, and once more showcases the glaring gulf between Italian horror movies of the last twenty years compared to even the lesser ones they produced almost without thinking about it from the golden era.

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.