You gotta give it to the Italians, no matter when or how or who… they all seem to want to create WTF moments to taint your mind with. I didn’t expect much from Ghost Son, a movie I’ve stayed away from - even if I own the DVD - for some time now. I thought it would be the ordinary Sixth Sense/The Others etc-style ghost film, which I’m kinda bored with nowadays, but instead I got a decent piece of cinematic trash - not fantastic in any way, but more fun than I ever could imagine. Lamberto Bava have mostly been involved in TV since the late eighties, but in 2005 he released the extremely trashy and silly The Torturer and somehow someone decided to give him a lot of money to shoot this film in South Africa with a great cast and an absurd premise.
Laura Harring and John Hannah is Stacy and Mark, a VERY happy couple living on a ranch in Africa. Not sure what they’re doing there, but they’re in love and laughs and makes love a lot. Just like happy couple do in movies. One day Mark has some pointless mission to do and takes his jeep… and crashes it! He’s trapped under it and dies in front of Stacy’s empty eyes. After the usual movie-mourning (stand looking at a grave, hugging the older dear friend - here, as usual, played by Pete Postlethwaite) she’s starts to feel depressed...and soon finds out she’s pregnant! Everything is fine… except that Mark, for some never-explained reason, takes over the body of the little boy and tries to kill Stacy! Scary!
Sorry for the sarcasms, but it’s hard to take Ghost Son serious. It just takes itself way too serious for a movie about a possessed killer-baby. But don’t worry, I wasn’t bored - which is the most important thing for me. The only bad movies are the boring ones, you know. This obviously have a decent budget, a quite competent cast (which also includes the always reliable Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and fun and cheesy effects by Sergio Stivaletti. It never becomes scary, not even when Bava REALLY tries. It’s something with a ranch in South Africa that’s not scary at all...but I guess the biggest fault is in the script, which just goes on and on with platitudes and clichés. The cast fights with their lines and somehow carries it to the end, but this is not much different from the happy seventies or eighties where imported international stars slummed in Italian co-productions for an okay-ish paycheck.
But there’s fun stuff here, just wait! The film itself looks gorgeous and professional and is packed with stuff you never seen before, for example an infant fondling his mothers breast in a sexual way...or the same infant, in a very extended scene, trying to bite off his mother’s nipple! When the baby starts talking with John Hannah’s voice it’s more hilarious than scary! This goes on and well, it’s more silly than anything else. My favorite scene is without a doubt the vomit-scene, which is so unexpected it's like from a Monty Python skit! Check out my Instagram for a visual representation of this or just check the video down below.
Ghost Son is not a good movie in the traditional sense, but it’s a lot of fun in a slow-moving boring way. The way I like movies. Not too exciting, not too fun, but still with a touch of exploitative entertainment.
"Sorry for the sarcasms, but it’s hard to take Ghost Son serious. It just takes itself way too serious for a movie about a possessed killer-baby."
Whoa now!
Easy now, young man!
What could be more scarier than an possessed killer baby?
hahahhahahhahah.....yeah...hilarious premise.
"But there’s fun stuff here, just wait! The film itself looks gorgeous and professional and is packed with stuff you never seen before, for example an infant fondling his mothers breast in a sexual way...or the same infant, in a very extended scene, trying to bite off his mother’s nipple!"
Maybe that´s what Larry Cohen needed in It's Alive (1974) ....a monster infant raping...um....Caroline Munro?
hahahhahahhahahhahah
"Ghost Son is not a good movie in the traditional sense, but it’s a lot of fun in a slow-moving boring way."
What?
Vomiting baby films does not equal quality?
Who would known that...?
hahhahahahha.....good review and tahnks.
Posted by: Megatron | August 15, 2014 at 00:23