Prime Time: The Ghostmaker (2012)

Another film inspired by true events, which means so little nowadays that it's practically not even worth using as a selling point, The Ghostmaker at least has an interesting premise to separate it from the multitude of generic horrors available on various streaming platforms. So it's a shame that director Mauro Borrelli, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Svatos, seems intent on turning it into a generic horror.

Kyle (Aaron Dean Eisenberg) manages to get his hands on a strange coffin-like device, a curiosity that he decides to keep and play around with. It's a nice piece, with some interesting clockwork mechanisms in place to allow it to . . . well, it essentially turns people into spirits. Kyle enjoys giving it a whirl, as does his friend, Sutton (J. Walter Holland). Being without a physical body allows the guys to try out some tricks, find out some information they otherwise wouldn't have been privy to, and seems like fun. But if you keep cheating death then it's not long until the reaper comes to claim a prize.

Feeling like a well-presented debut feature (although it isn't, Borrelli has a few to his credit before this), The Ghostmaker makes the mistake of simply not having enough faith in the main concept, deciding to add some drug issues to one of the characters, as well as some relationship trouble between Kyle and his partner, Julie (Liz Fenning). You have character details revealed that start to turn the film into some strange kind of soap opera when it should be content to sell itself as the solid little horror movie beating away beneath the distractions.

The cast are okay, but it's hard to judge when their characters are written like some constantly evolving improv sketch. There are also some minor characters given more screentime than they deserve, especially while poor Fenning seems to be forgotten about for much of the runtime.

This could have been an excellent, enjoyably novel, genre flick. The potential was there for it to be the kind of film fans discover and start telling one another about, which could then have led to a sequel or two (because it's always easy to bring in a new bunch of unsuspecting victims when you're playing around with ideas picked out from Final Destination and Flatliners). It still comes close to being that kind of film, thanks to the magical device that the plot is built around, but it falls somewhat short.

Maybe in a few years we'll see someone get the idea in their heads to remake this. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, especially if they pare down the extraneous elements and add some more characters to take their turn in the ghostmaker. But we all know that these little movies aren't the ones that get picked for remakes.

5/10

Ghosthunters (2016)

Here's the bad news, for some of you anyway. This is another horror movie from The Asylum. It's not bad news for me though. As most people who know me will already know, I have a bit of a soft spot for The Asylum. They have certainly given me some stinkers to endure (and one of their movies was the very first that I gave a deserved 1/10 to) but I tend to find most of their output fairly painless, sometimes easy to laugh at, and sometimes even genuinely entertaining.

Ghosthunters comes close to breaking into the last category. Close, but not close enough. It's all about, as if you couldn't guess, a group of people who spend time in a house trying to hunt some ghosts. One member of the group, Neal (David O'Donnell), has created a device that can capture ghosts and contain their ectoplasm. Another group member, Henry (Stephen Manley), is more motivated than usual as he seeks to free the souls of his murdered wife and daughter.

There are one or two plot twists here that are incredibly silly, and also unnecessary, but Ghosthunters works quite well in a number of scenes. This is The Asylum showing that they can work in similar territory as James Wan and co. and horror fans should be kept relatively entertained by a number of decent, if predictable, scares.

Writer-director Pearry Reginald Teo may not have perfected the art of crafting a good horror script so it's good to know that he at least has a grasp on how to execute the scares, even if they are quite simplistic. They're jump scares that won't make hardened genre veterans jump, which doesn't make them any less enjoyable while the film is trying its hardest.

The cast don't do anything to elevate the script, sadly, and range from the eminently forgettable to the borderline terrible. O'Donnell isn't too bad, nor is Francesca Santoro (playing Amy, another group member), but Manley is a bit too jittery and over the top, and Liz Fenning and Crystal Web feel like their moments could have been combined to make one character.

I still enjoyed this, despite the many mistakes made, but I know that I am often more forgiving than many other viewers. I'd still say that it's worth your time though. A bit of reshuffling of the plot, some tweaking of the script, and perhaps a few more simple scares, and this could have been a genuinely good ghost flick. But then it wouldn't have felt like something from The Asylum, so maybe it's all for the best.

5/10

The DVD is available here.