By David Dent
Jill Gevargizian’s debut feature, 2020’s ‘The Stylist’, received its fair share of thumbs up notices. Four years later and Gevargizian’s back, this time with a haunted house story which draws on a variety of influences, but this time with less impact.
In an intriguing setup Kia Dorsey plays Laura who, with her wayward friend Adrian (Sam Lukowski) get their kicks from the titular ‘ghost game’, in which the pair steal into an occupied house late at night and film themselves snooping around while the inhabitants sleep.
The game is governed by three rules, courtesy of the mythical game creator Dr Whateley; don’t get caught, don’t steal anything; and have a plan.
Laura’s boyfriend Vin (Zaen Haidar) is shocked when he finds out his girl’s ‘hobby’ (her description) but their relationship is too important to him, so he manages to muscle in on their next project, a game at the infamous haunted Halton house in Maryland. He also contrives to get Adrian bumped off the team to have a little alone time with Laura.
The house was the site of an infamous Amityville style mass murder, where the mum of the household poisoned her family into paralysis and then drowned them in each of the manse’s bathtubs. It’s been empty but is about to be re-occupied by a down at heel family, headed by a struggling alcoholic writer Pete (Michael C. Williams). He’s looking to make some bucks by knocking off a book on the history of the house; his long suffering wife Meg (Emily Bennett) and Pete’s ‘on the spectrum’ stepdaughter Sam (Vienna Maas) complete the family.
Vin and Laura sneak into the house, unsurprisingly rejoined by Adrian, no respecter of the rules of the game, shortly followed by the family; as Pete, Meg and Sam settle in, and the ‘ghost gamers’ try and stay out of the way, there’s a third, unexplained presence in the house.
If all this sounds a little Scooby Doo, well you’d be right (the ending even apes the finale of one of those shows, with added violence). ‘Ghost Game’ is a fascinating piece; it has a great setup but squanders most of the middle section with a load of wandering around (which to be fair is what the story is about) and the whole movie doesn’t really settle on anything. It’s a shame because the cast are great, but there are too many of them for such a thinly budgeted project, and the whole thing remains inconclusive.
Bloody Flicks 