The Horror Show
Ghost House
by Rich Ragsdale
Leveraging on the magnificent Thai landscape, Rich Ragsdale’s low-budget supernatural film Ghost House features a fusion of numerous horror tropes forming a predictable, generic and lifeless narrative.
The main focus is on an unsuspecting American couple who travels all the way to rural Thailand and makes all the wrong decisions before falling victim to a sinister demon. More specifically, in an effort to keep audiences on edge Ghost House follows Jim (James Landry Hebert) and Julie’s (Scout Taylor-Compton) encounter with supernatural forces, leaving them haunted and fighting for their lives. The duo arrives completely unprepared in Bangkok and immediately shows trust in a shuttle driver and self-styled tour guide who means trouble. The story progresses relatively quickly and the couple finds themselves in a Thai cultural site in the middle of the night.
Familiar themes of supernatural possession and eerie phenomena signal that things have taken a wrong turn, only to lead to the inevitable - and unfortunately unimaginative - climax.
One of the weakest areas of Ghost House is that it seems to have no ideas of its own. The convenience with which the plot unravels indicates a serious lack of originality and most of the scare scenes obey to the art of rip-off and duplicate; a logic often found in the horror genre.
Much like the storyline, the characters are also incredibly indifferent and paper-thin. Although Scout Taylor-Compton does her best as Julie, the weak dialogues and complete lack of character development make her persona dry and bland.
On a bright side, cinematographer Pierluigi Malavasi does an excellent job capturing the stunning beauty of the country. Making the most of lighting and framing, Malavasi breathes a bit of professionalism into a rather uninspiring narrative, but great cinematography aside, there is not much to appreciate here.
Damagingly, despite Taylor-Compton’s strong performance and Malavasi’s brilliant cinematography, Ghost House suffers from an overbearing storyline and fails in its mission to keep audiences on edge.
Maria Kriva, HMS
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