Ghost Son

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.

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.

"Ghost Son" takes place in South Africa.A married couple Stacey and Mark live on the farm with their black teenage maid.Mark and Stacey love each other deeply.Unfortunately Mark dies in a tragic truck accident.Stacey returns to the farm and decides to remain there since she feels close to Mark.She is also carrying Mark's baby.After delivering the baby Stacey quickly becomes sure that her infant son is possessed by Mark's spirit.The evil force tries to kill Stacey to bring her to Mark."Ghost Son" has the higher production values than Lamberto Bava's efforts.The production design is great and the cinematography is very lush.There are some dull moments and silly scenes,though.The climax is truly terrible.6 vomiting babies out of 10.

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.