Mensagem do Além

Stacey (Laura Harring) and Mark (John Hannah) have recently married and are deeply in love for each other, living in Mark's farm in Africa. When Mark has a fatal car accident, the widow Stacey misses him and decides to stay with their orphan teenager maid Thandi (Mosa Kaiser) in the farm. Later, her friend and doctor Doc (Peter Postlethwaite) finds that Stacey is pregnant of Mark. After a complicated delivery, Stacey notes that her baby in some moments seems to be possessed by the spirit of Mark, trying to kill her to bring her to spend the eternity with Mark.

Lamberto Bava is the son of the great Italian director of horror movies Mario Bava, and directed the cult "Demons" and "Demons 2". Based on these samples of his filmography, I bought "Ghost Son" expecting to see a scary and creepy horror movie. Unfortunately, my expectation was only satisfied in brief moments and I can list some reasons. First, there is no previous development of the key characters of Mark and Stacey and their love, inclusive for a better explanation of the motives of the ghost of Mark trying to bring Stacey to stay with him. The creepy and mysterious Thandi, who insists that lives with her mother that died when she was five years old, is simply wasted along the narrative. I expected to see her mother, but she is simply ignored and limited to be another lie of Thandi. The baby boy recalls "Chucky" in some moments, and Doc is completely stupid, at least not noticing that Stacey has had at least a nervous breakdown. In spite of the flaws in the screenplay, there are some creepy scenes along this film, which could be better and better based on the cast. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Mensagem do Além" ("Message From Beyond")

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.

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.

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.

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.