Ghosts of War (2020) Review

Ghosts of War (2020) Review

Dir. Eric Bress

 

Horror / War Hybird simultaneously has too much of its cake and doesn’t eat enough of it.

 

 

A cast of familiar faces are plagued by supernatural scares in Nazi Occupied France in this Netflix Horror movie. The set up is odd but it’s ambitions are amicable and for the first hour or so it certainly succeeds in blending them together in a tasteful and watchable fashion. 

 

I came into the film with an open mind, wanting it to succeed at its rather big intentions. Overlord in 2018 had previously mixed WW2 with horror, but had focused more on the zombie horror angle which has always been an easy combination. WW2 and ghosts on the other hand is a hard mix to get right.

 

The cast are good, talented actors. Many of whom recognisable faces from TV series like Titans and Smallville. The characters they are playing here however, don’t merit such talent. Mostly archetypes; there’s very little done to distinguish this band of soldiers from any other lot from a generic action flick. You’ve got the big, strong brute with a temper, the glasses wearing nerd who has all the history and culture knowledge and the pretty faced protagonist. It’s nothing groundbreaking in that sense. The one exception to the rule is Kyle Gallner's character. There are certain scenes where he almost acts his way out of this movie, it’s an unhinged and committed performance as a deeply troubled soldier who has seen real horror. It’s a performance way too good for the movie it’s in. In a couple of scenes he shines, but he’s not got much else to work with in script material. I hope to see him flex his acting chops more freely in the future, he definitely has ability.

 

The editing of this film is one of the issues. Whether it’s the way it’s written or edited is up for debate but the film often just jumps from scene to scene without finding a flow. It knows what all it’s pieces are ; each scare, tension builder and eerie walking scene are effective in isolation, but when combined they never really feel like a connected narrative. It does feel very jumbled. 

 

One scene that completely took me out of the film was a scene that had so obviously been re shuffled. A scene that had obviously been designed to take place somewhere in the second or third act, but had been pushed forward and resulted in an obvious and abrasive continuity error. The scene in question was so noticeable for the fact the characters were suddenly battle damaged and a character was missing. I correctly predicted that there would be an action scene and a death later in the film and at that point I knew I had seen the strings of this film. It wasn’t intentional, despite the films purposefully confusing layout. It was a massive oversight and it took me right out of the film. A bizarre and foolish editing decision. 

 

I was invested in the premise still, and I wanted to see if it could pull it off. Alas, it couldn’t. This film is very good at setting up the scares. It’s effective at tension building and keeping you on the edge of your seat, however it doesn’t manage to pay off those scares. The scares themselves are naff, generic and largely un scary. 

 

Still, a cheesy ghost flick with a compelling war story to tell would still entertain me. Where it lost me was in the third act. Everything falls apart with a series of unravelling plot twists that are so polarising they leave you scratching your head. I wish they’d just committed to the original set up, it had great potential. Instead it tries too hard to be clever and hard hitting and the result is just tiring. 

 

The ending is poor, unsatisfying and completely deflating, leaving you feeling like you wasted your time. Like a parent who’s child had been given detention; I wasn’t angry, I was just disappointed.  

 

Trying too hard to be clever, this mess of a film fails to deliver on its potential-rich premise and instead takes a hard left into crazy town, feeling the need to do a last minute exposition dump that feels like something out of the Matrix rather than Insidious. I was on board for as long as I could be, but with a groan-worthy twist that fails to deliver its punches, Ghosts of War just leaves you wishing you stopped the film at the halfway point and imagined the rest in your head.

 

It’s a true shame, as the horror genre lends itself to war films quite well, if done rightly. This was not it. 

Ghosts of War is haunting in all the way wrong ways.  

 

4/10

 

Review by Elliott Thomas Griffiths