Ghosts

"Ghosts" plays more as a special effects reel than as a movie or a music video. The "song" portion of the video is incredibly slight. In his heyday, Michael Jackson and his accomplices were able to produce videos that integrated fun (if not brilliant) visuals with his once unique brand of pop music. Now, his videos -- of which "Ghosts" is easily the worst -- have become half-hour-long egofests.

Stan Winston is a brilliant makeup artist, but as a director he is just awful. This video plays like a series of reaction shots: Michael Jackson does something ooky; the parents, kids, and Mayor react with horrified visages and huddle together; Michael does something "funny"; the parents and kids look amused (and for some reason comforted), while the Mayor continues to look perturbed. This series of events happens over and over and over again. At least half the video consists of those annoying reaction shots; what a waste of videotape!

Even the choreography for this video is poorly filmed, and choreography should be the focal point of any Michael Jackson video. Winston focuses on the makeup rather than on the dancers, giving closeups of their grotesque features instead of their footwork.

The video's message is obviously that odd-looking weirdos like Michael Jackson can still be lovable, but I do not see how the video succeeds in reinforcing this theory. The little kids involved seem to have no problem with Michael's ability to jump down another human's throat and manipulate him like a puppet. I dunno -- if I were ten years old, I think that might bother me a bit.

He may not look like the same Michael Jackson we saw in "Thriller", but he's just as good as he was before. The special effects were incredible. The makeup work (I loved seeing Michael Jackson as the mayor-ish guy) was incredible and so was the dancing. It's too bad the music wasn't as good. He uses some of his worse stuff in "Ghosts", which is mediocre by our standards. It isn't his best work, but "Ghosts" is still pretty entertaining.

Being a Michael Jackson fan since the early 1980's I've always remained interested in anything he does.

I think commercially his best days were behind him in the mid-90's, but this is still an excellent video and it far exceeds a lot of the crap that artists put out there today.

Most videos are the same thing over and over, the artists with the line dancers in bikinis behind them, YAWN!

Michael Jackson comes along and takes the music video to the next level, he puts a storyline into it and killer special effects.

When you get done, the only person the guy has failed to outdo is himself.

Like him or no, Michael Jackson is still the king of music video.

Yes I do. Who would think that MJ would top the amazing short film that is Thriller. This film right here is a masterpiece from start to finish. From the acting to the dancing. Its another classic by the King.

Michael Jackson has embraced generations with beautiful short films. Usually they are made to promote a single, but in this case he gives us something else. Sure, in this film there are also songs (which are available on c.d.), but the emphasis is on a funny story and great special effects. This release passed many people by, which is a shame since this thing is really worth watching and shows great promise at Michael's promised new acting jobs.