I was surprised to see the Lionsgate logo at the start, because this has everything you would expect from a The Asylum movie.
I don't think this movie even try to hide the fact its a Casper ripoff from the name, the poster, the plot, there is not much originality in there. So i knew what i was gonna watch. Now Casper is almost 30 years old, so its not necessarily a bad thing to have something similar that is new. The issue is everything was done better in Casper and hold up to today standards and is a much better movie still on all front.
The CGI in this is kinda servicable for what its going for. Its clearly not meant to be a realistic movie. But my main issue is there is barely any atmosphere or identity to the movie. For instance when they arrive to the "mansion", we do see a few rooms to show its big, but we barely ever seen anything again of it. Almost every mansion scenes are filmed in broad daylight so you never get that Halloween/Spooky vibe you had in Casper despite being a family movie.
The budget must had been very low. The third act do offer a few more interesting stuff, and a TINY bit of originality but it ain't much.
If you reading this on Letterboxd, i am giving the movie 2.5 Stars because its barely an average movie at best, but i will make an exeption and give it a yellow heart anyway (wich i usually reserve for 3 stars/6 and up) because i can't say i disliked it, it was late at night and i was bored and it "entertained" me enough. The young lead actress was also likable. But note i am someone easy to please when it comes to movies and i am a big of an "adult kid".
But even for young kids, i doubt they will want to return to this movie like i did myself many times with Casper as a kid. Obviously these days you have much more choice and accessibility, wich we didn't in the 90s, but even taking that into consideration.
