User reviews

Nothing outright sucks about this movie, but it doesn't really do much interesting. It's not bad, but some of these reviews are truly perplexing.

If you are a found footage fan, an interesting premise and real world link are worth a single watch, but wouldn't be the end of the world if you missed it.

Ah, found footage. A niche genre that at its best can be exceptional, and that at its worst might be more unwatchable than even the worst of conventional film-making styles. Given the conceit of three amateur filmmakers making their own documentary, there is at least standard plausibility for the camera constantly rolling as it does. Given that conceit, too, it's arguable that 'Ghoul' is a tad on the exploitative side of cinema as the picture begins with denoting a terrible real history of orchestrated famine, and accounts of cannibalism, as the basis of its narrative. From there one might reasonably say that the proceedings become fairly routine for this type of picture; that Czech filmmaker Petr Jákl and his cast and crew were able to shoot on location in the Ukraine enters in the equation mostly only as a matter of flavoring for this specific tale. Maybe it speaks to my expectations more than anything else, but I was also a bit surprised that the course of events is limited to a single primary location, and a nondescript one at that; for some reason I assumed something a little more dynamic. In any event, none of this is an inherent mark against this feature, and while how much one enjoys 'Ghoul' will mostly depend on how much one likes found footage in the first place, I think this is at least moderately entertaining.

True, there's perhaps nothing here that we haven't seen before, and for lack of any especial spark, this will struggle to stand out in a crowd or rise above a basic level of horror fun. For what it's worth, though - while overall "average," I'd say this is about as well made as most any such title. On the one hand, I like small touches like Inna's witchcraft, and nuanced inclusion of folklore about consuming (human) flesh. I think the cast is swell, effects and special makeup look good (including blood and gore), and there are some smart ideas scattered throughout, including the more subtle instances of sound effects or visuals. At its best, in some measure 'Ghoul' successfully crafts some fine atmosphere, and some chilling moments. On the other hand, especially as the length progresses, the movie does fall into some of the common traps of found footage specifically and horror generally, and is prey to the same criticisms. Unsteady camerawork, long darkness, and bursts of loud audio mean that even some scenes that are otherwise worthy are beleaguered by a sense of being arbitrary and far-fetched. That's to say nothing of other scenes that as they present are too blunt or tactless at the outset, just flailing and/or "too much," and the climax and ending are rather overfull.

If my words seem blasé or noncommittal, take that as a reflection of the feature itself. It's not bad, and I can safely I say I do like it - it's also nothing special, either. There are no major, glaring flaws; nor are there any major, luminous strengths. How much you like or dislike this will correspond exactly to how you generally feel about found footage at large. It's duly enjoyable if you come across it; there's also no reason to go out of your way for it. When all is said and done I had a fairly good time watching 'Ghoul,' and maybe that's all it needs to be.

There have been loads of found footage ghost films out there, and there are more, and more continuing to be made. Some unique, with lots to offer, and some just seeming to be the same as the last. "Ghoul" typically gives nothing really new to the table, giving us the same exact plot, and direction as many, many other found footage paranormal films.

The story tries to make itself stand out from the rest, a story to be remembered, and unique. Though, here, they completely fell flat. The movie tried to pass off to the audience a plot, and or story of which has small things to offer, yet not enough to make this film stand out from the rest of the others just like this. The story here is completely clichéd, we've all seen it before, a couple of people who know each other really well decide to head off to a far off location to shoot a documentary, of which goes horribly wrong. We've seen this exact same plot elsewhere, this movie just duplicates the exact same plot, and executes it! The only thing remotely different is that there's different actors / characters, and a different location. As said before, it may of seemed like a really unique idea, but when actually shown it's not enough, making the plot, as well as the movies entire story just another copy of a different found footage paranormal film you've all probably seen before at least once.

The characters in this movie, as well as completely clichéd. You have your insecure girls of which have second thoughts, and begin to freak out. Then, you have the two guys, both different. One insecure, and unsure of half the decisions the other makes, the tough character. I can't emphasize this enough. We have all seen this before. The characters in this film make, pretty much the same choices you've seen in other horror films, some stupid, some smart, and some just flat out questionable. The point being the characters in this movie have been seen millions of times before; I just recently saw a film featuring a character JUST like one seen in this film! The acting, of which, of course follows these characters wasn't bad .. at some points. At parts of the film the acting was meant to be at it's best, these actors seemed to only overact they're parts a bit. For example, when a character is lead to a situation of despair, these characters seemed to be overacting that said situational part. But for the most part of the movie, the actors kept a solid share of serious parts. Overall, acting wasn't TOO bad, but at the same time, though the actors seemed to overact a bit, turning out to be noticeable.

Finally, for this so called Ghoul. Or in this case, the devilish villain the movie presents. It was fine at first, but fell a bit flat. At first, the movie gave the audience a somewhat mystery - like look into the ghoul, giving us little information on it, and allowing out imaginations to do the work. Around the middle, to end of this movie.. it simply falls flat. The ghoul's identity has finally been unleashed. For what that stood for, it was quite frightening, but decided to completely fall flat when the ghoul was actually visually seen from the audience. The visually seen ghoul honestly wasn't the best, not only because the cinematography / camera shook all around when the visual points of time came, but when audiences could actually get a clear view, it didn't exactly pay off. It simply seemed amateurish, not making the cut. In conclusion, the enemy here had a good profile without visual appearance. But when audiences finally saw him, it didn't exactly pay off, and it was amateurish.

This movie was just completely clichéd! They tried making it unique, and fresh, but failed completely, instead, this movie just proves to be yet another found footage paranormal film. It offers little to nothing new, and all attempts just didn't exactly make the cut. In conclusion, this film was just. Eh. You've seen this exact same act millions of times before, nothing different except the scene, and characters. I'd recommend this to those who are simply bored with nothing else to watch. But for any horror fan looking for something fresh, and new, you defiantly need to go elsewhere.

I don't know what movie the other reviewers were watching but I think they must be associated with the movie because it was More Than Terrible. I never rate movies but I felt I must warn my fellow movie lovers of this travesty.

I go to the movies all the time and I never want to leave or ask for my money back but this movie made me want to do both. It was like a really badly made "Blair Witch" copy but with a much lower budget and worse actors and writers. It kept promising scares and action (and a plot) but never delivered. I believe a bunch of 5 year olds could have made a better movie. Stay Away unless you just like wasting money...

Found footage movies are okay if they are done right. This one was done pretty well. I liked the plot quite a bit, and it was an interesting take on Andrei Chikatilo. The people that made this movie also must have done a fair amount of research into Chikatilo because they did a great job relaying his story. A lot of movies don't do that any more. They paid subtle respect to the true story of that real monster in a lot of ways that people may not have noticed. Chikatilo did most of his murders in rowed forest area's, just like where they are in the movie. The information about his brother is very accurate, according to Chikatilo anyway. The acting was pretty well done for a low budget movie, and it was a very creepy story.

A lot of the criticism on here isn't warranted. It seems if the story doesn't hit you over the head with the plot now days people don't get it. It's fun to have to think about what happened, give it a try. Also the camera was shaky because that's how a found footage movie should look.

Honestly I thought it was a pretty good film.

The found footage genre has just about ran it's course, not to say that there hasn't been some pretty good found footage films, but it's gotten to the point where this kind of film has become to go to for film makers who just want to cash in on a few jump scares while not blowing a lot of money on a big budget.

There lies the problem with "Ghoul", there's is nothing about this film that makes it stand out from the massive pile of found footage horror that we have seen made in the past years. It follows the same basic story line (people making a documentary) and it throws out the same basic scenes (Jump scares, running through the woods, lots of arguing and screaming), it never tries to do anything to make itself be more than "Just another Found Footage horror flick".

Blair Witch Project was a scary and interesting movie because it made us feel like we were really watching a group of people get lost in the woods, plus obviously we weren't use to seeing films filmed in that way. But now we are just way too use to everything that these kinds of films can do and it doesn't seem like the Filmmakers behind "Ghoul" had any real interest in trying to show us something we haven't seen before.

If you've seen one Found Footage film then you have pretty much already seen this. It's just not good and it's really not worth your time.

3/10

Out of all the found footage horror films i've seen, this one at least kept me entertained from start to finish, plot was good and it continued to build throughout the film, didn't take an hour and 30 minutes for anything to happen like the blair witch project, i really enjoyed it, Acting was good not great but the story was a lot of fun and completely had me sold from the beginning to end, it didn't rely on jump scares like most of these found footage horror movies do and it was creepy as all hell, not sure why all the horrible reviews i thought it was great. I would recommend this movie to anyone not looking for the next Oscar winner but just a late night good old fashion horror flick that is as intense as can be from start to finish

I loved every second of this one and I'm sure other die hard fans of the found footage genre will too!

Pretty standard plot, but the setting and execution were near flawless. I have no complaints other than a few cheap jump scares towards the beginning. Other than that, this was a really cool movie!

So it's not winning any awards, but the extreme difference in reviews is weird. So here's my no spoiler take on it:

Def not a 10, or a 1 either, my 7 i think was pretty accurate, maybe low considering how much they did with no budget (i assume). Too bad I can't throw in a .5 lol. Look into that IMDb!

I don't like found footage type movies, I thought the blair witch project was utter crap.

The acting in this movie is much better, actually I'd go as far as to say the acting was believable, which is rare, especially considering the script has to make them seem like actual people for that. Most of them did great.

They did some other things really well in this movie, including the use of the camera light, which I would normally find annoying, but somehow they made it work.

If you want to watch a half decent horror flick, and god knows there aren't many out there, this isn't a bad way to go. I think I liked it because it combined different kinds of creepiness, and it didn't do it badly.

Maybe I was lucky because I went in not having read or seen anything about the movie, but still didn't expect much never having heard of it.

I am a complete and total sucker for found footage horror movies, even bad ones. I absolutely love them. It's extremely difficult to screw up a found footage horror movie for me to not enjoy it.

This film answers that challenge and succeeds soundly. It is just flat-out boring.

For one, the characters are all constantly rambling and mumbling in all different directions at the start, leaving the plot to be almost completely incoherent. There's little to no chemistry with any of the protagonists and none of them stand out in any particular way. Even up to the climax of the film, I had no idea who they were to each other, friends or family members or anything, and briefly mentioned plot points all the way at the beginning get resurrected and then completely forgotten and ignored by the very next scene.

The lack of any real personality, even one-dimensional and exaggerated, among the characters means that there's absolutely nothing and no one to latch on to as a point of focus. Everyone is boring and bland and doing their thing and you end up fading in and out of attention until you're half an hour in, lost, about to catch up, only to lose interest again and end up 46 minutes in and lost again.

What little I could make of the plot involved student filmmakers going to Ukraine, allegedly to interview the "known last survivor of the horrific 1932 Soviet cannibalism epidemic".

This comes and goes in literally the first 10 minutes or so before it gets dropped completely and they start focusing on some random guy called "Boris" who spent 15 years in prison for cannibalism or something. This inexplicably leads to them going to a random cabin in the woods supposedly owned by Boris, where they start playing Ouija with some other random ukrainian woman to contact some demon or ghost or something for unknown reasons.

This is roughly the full extent of the plot, with a bunch of meaningless add-ons and red herrings which are treated with absolutely no importance whatsoever and usually get dropped immediately after they're brought up.

For whatever reason, virtually nothing stuck with me in terms of the story, so it would seem to me that it would necessitate a re-watching, which I absolutely would consider if it weren't so insufferably boring.

Thought, this might be interesting and at least it's not a fake ghost hunters documentary. And then it turned into a fake ghost hunter documentary. Types of horror movie that should no longer be made 1) shaky cam found footage Blair Witch wanna be. 2) young couple who recently lost a child going to an isolated home/cabin/tent/yurt/poorly dug hole in the ground that a creepy gas station attendant warned them that was the sight of bus load of orphans was butchered and the corpses were devoured by a separate group of orphans that went feral. 3) fake ghost hunting/ouija board extravaganza gone wrong. I realize with (almost) everyone on the planet that has a camera and with the 80 million streaming channels with more coming every day needing a ridiculous amounts of content it's almost like making lemonade with only a picture of a lemon and the bottom of the barrel gets closer to the top this is unlikely to stop these from being made. But I can dream. Movie sucks acting sucks and I'll with my own ratings system score of Meh blah meh. Don't expect much when you watch this drek, and if it's possible this is unfair to drek to compare it with this movie.

There is absolutely nothing in the way of scares in this film that you haven't seen before. Dialogue is contrived and awful (hence, the "You want to eat me?" title of this review) , and you'll have to deal with the same sort of idiotic decisions that people make only in horror movies. Someone could make a good film surrounding the real-life Russian serial killer and cannibal, Andrei Chikatilo, but this isn't it.

Ill start by saying how much i cant stand found footage, dark or shaky cameras. This movie was obviously done w a minimal amount of $$$ yet they still managed to pull it off. Maybe its the fact that i watch so much serial killer film and documentaries, this little film intrigued me when they began talking about a cannibal serial killer whose spirit was in the house where they were to film. The acting was a bit better than Blair Witch. One thing i dont like which is in every single movie nowadays is the stupid decisions people keep making. Id like a bit more reality where people actually listen to their friends or their basic survival instincts but oh well. When those characters die horribly i feel a slight smile on my face. Anyway im rambling cuz i only rate movies on here, almost never write reviews. Watch it if youre chill and dont expect big production. Youll be surprised at how well they pull off the creepiness.

I ran into this movie by accident, but I am happy I did. I must say that this movie is underrated, and in it's category - docu footage horror, it's one of the best I've seen. Unlike in Bkairwitch, where you are tortured for hours by yells and crackling sounds without ever seeing some actual horror scene, here you get your portion of horror. Gradually things go more intense and you try to understand who is good and who isn't.

The plot isn't much complex, but clear enough to make you enjoy what happens in between. The acting is actually good and believable.

For sure, I would not stay there for a day longer, as obviously things were not right there when a person disappeared, but they did stay... And that's why you have something to watch now:-)

The final was ok, but I would prefer a happy ending at least for one of the characters, still this way it's more realistic.

Life is not a Fairy tale after all.

Yes, it's a clichefest, but very well-made, entertaining and scary one. If you know the culture, the language, the way Ukranian people speak, behave and live, you'd know how realistic everything is in this movie. The characters are also not as dumb as you usually see in everyone's favourite Hollywood horrors.

If you're found footage fan, I can definitely recommend this movie. I think I already watched at least a half of all digitally/physically distributed found footage movies in the world, and I can say it's a really good one.

There are at least 3 fake reviews on IMDb for this movie at the moment, one positive and 2 negatives (accounts registered only to post a review for this movie). One of these fake ones says "worst move of all time" and doesn't even say why, so connect the dots for yourself.

This Ukranian FF horror is nothing different from the regular ones you must have seen earlier....a crew on a documentary shoot, enquiries , small sinister incidents that begin and finally the outburst of the evil. This time it takes a real incident to back its devils, cannibals.

The first 45 mins or so are really slow paced and hence even an 85 mins film feels like an effort to complete. The real fun begins in the last 30 mins (which basically is the same case with every FF horror but it's just that many others have a better engaging middle part as compared to this film). The forests at night become scary to witness and ya , how can we forget the turning of the camera scene always keeping us on toes , waiting anxiously that on which camera turn we will see a creepy figure.. jumpscare the S out if you.

Overall, decent one time watch.

At the start you hear some lessons of how Communism works, when Stalin forced the starvation of millions of Ukrainians and many of them resorted to cannibalism to try to survive.

-1 Star for the pretty obvious 'filming' after being told to turn the camera off....no camera angles and zooming were avoided which kinda messed up my suspension of disbelief!!!

Okay well the end turns into a waste of time screaming shaky camera and squish noises festival.

-1 For the End which is lame and turns this into a veritable waste of time.

3/10