Frightfest 2024: ‘Ghost Game’ Review
Stars: Zaen Haidar, Kia Dorsey, Sam Lukowski, Emily Bennett, Michael C. Williams, Vienna Maas | Written by Adam Cesare | Directed by Jill Gevargizian
Director Jill Gevargizian follows her acclaimed 2020 debut The Stylist with Ghost Game, a low-budget haunted house thriller based on the real-life trend of ‘phrogging’, namely living in someone’s house, undetected. Sadly, it never quite lives up to its initial premise, and is let down by poor writing and lacklustre performances.
The film begins with Laura (Kia Dorsey) and her partner Adrian (Sam Lukowski) getting caught phrogging, only for the camera to pull back and reveal Laura’s new boyfriend Vin (Zaen Haidar) watching footage of their escapade on a laptop. Then pushy, arrogant Adrian shows up and before Vin knows what he’s doing, he’s been railroaded into tagging along on their latest phrogging adventure, breaking into the supposedly haunted Halton House, the legendary site of a grisly murder.
However, phrogging wouldn’t be phrogging without living residents to prank, since the idea is to convince the owners that the place is haunted and capture their fake haunted house shenanigans on camera. Enter the new owners: recently disgraced author Pete (Michael C. Williams), his wife (Emily Bennett) and their autistic daughter Sam (Vienna Maas), who seems particularly attuned to the house and its mysteries.
Sure enough, spooky things start happening and no-one is quite sure if it’s the pranksters doing the pranking, the pranksters themselves being pranked or something sinister in the woodwork. And with Pete’s frustration and anger building, there’s a sense of violent tension running high within the building, and the pranksters wonder whether they ought to reveal themselves and intervene before it’s too late.
The central idea of Ghost Game is strong, but there’s a real sense of wasted potential here, as the story repeatedly falters in execution. For one thing, the characters are all deeply unlikeable, so it’s hard to care too much about what happens to any of them. That’s not helped by the performances of the three leads, all of which are either dull, tedious or unconvincing throughout, depending on who you’re watching.
The script doesn’t help either – this is the kind of movie where the characters repeatedly make idiotic decisions and you have to stop yourself from yelling at them. They’re also not above yelling at each other, which maybe isn’t the best idea, when you’re trying to remain undetected in a house.
On top of that, the action frequently devolves into long, boring sequences of characters just sneaking through the house in the dark, which quickly becomes tedious, not least because there’s so little to look at. In fairness, things do liven up towards the end, for an unexpected out-of-nowhere twist, but by then you will have long since ceased to care.
** 2/5
Ghost Game screened as part of this year’s Frightfest London.
