For as long as there have been cameras, they’ve been used to “capture” ghosts.
The invention of the daguerreotype in the 1800s brought with it the advent of “spirit photography” – an attempt to capture definitive photographic proof of the paranormal (or at least sell it as such), during the height of the Victorian spiritualism craze. Some of the earliest motion pictures were centred around the summoning and conjuring of phantoms and devils that would wreak havoc upon the humans via the powers of celluloid trickery and illusion. When video-sharing sites such as YouTube first started popping up in the mid-2000s, they were almost immediately flooded with grainy, low-res attempts by ordinary, everyday people to catch the supernatural on camera in their homes and workplaces. Even now, in our modern age of TikTok influencers and streaming personalities, the supernatural retains its power within the lens. As Ghost Game goes to show, the very presence of a camera can be invitation enough for the spirits of the dead to come out and play.
Receiving its international premiere at the 25th London FrightFest, Ghost Game is the latest cinematic outing from filmmaker, producer, hairstylist and overall Jack (or should that be Jill?)-of-all-trades, Jill Gevargizian – whose feature directorial debut The Stylist (2020), is one of my personal horror highlights of this decade. Arguably just as exciting as Gevargizian’s return to the director’s chair is Ghost Game’s screenwriter, horror author Adam Cesare – who’s best known for writing the Bram Stoker Award-winning Young Adult novel “Clown in a Cornfield”, as well as penning the script for the recent bowling-alley throwback slasher Last Night at Terrace Lanes (2024). Ghost Game sees both its director and writer take a departure from their familiar worlds of scissor-wielding maniacs and stab-happy sadists – but did their joint venture into the realm of the paranormal come back with successful results?
After Vin (Zaen Haidar), discovers that his girlfriend Laura (Kia Dorsey), is part of an online community that films themselves breaking into peoples’ homes and living alongside them without their knowledge, Ghost Game follows the couple’s first (and perhaps last), attempt to participate in this viral internet challenge together. The two, accompanied unexpectedly by Laura’s former challenge-partner Adrian (Sam Lukowski), set up camp in the attic of Halton House – the notorious and supposedly haunted site of a gruesome series of murders decades prior. The group intend to spy (and perhaps play a few pranks), on the house’s new residents – struggling author Pete (Michael C. Williams), his wife Meg (Emily Bennett), and their young daughter Sam (Vienna Maas), who’s on the autism spectrum. Unfortunately for the trio of uninvited guests, they quickly realise that they may not be the only ones hiding in the house as both the family and the “ghosts” experience unexplained phenomena within hours of arriving. Could the spirits of Halton House’s bloody past have returned to ensure that all who enter become permanent residents?
For what it’s worth, every actor here delivers a decent enough performance, and director Gevargizian makes good use of the location she’s working with, achieving some really nice shots and making the absolute most of the crumbling manor’s eerie natural lighting.
Unfortunately, Ghost Game didn’t make this viewer a particularly happy haunt, but it’s no fault of director Gevargizian, whose direction is perfectly competent. I can imagine that Cesare’s specific flavour of horror prose could translate perfectly to screen in a different project, but here it feels as though each of the film’s halves can’t quite hold each other up. Though occasionally reminiscent of previous squatter-horror successes such as Housebound (2014) or I See You (2019), Ghost Game largely feels like a marriage of elements on the verge of breakdown. Its naturalistic, down-to-Earth presentation clashes with the paperback horror-esque style script; the choice to play with familiar haunted-house tropes clashes with the film’s seeming disinterest in said elements; and the choice to tell a story about a controversial online challenge feels out-of-touch with any real-life counterparts – not to mention the ways in which modern-day teens interact with each other and social-media itself.
It doesn’t help that Ghost Game’s pacing is incredibly uneven, with very little horror imagery until a good hour into this relatively short feature – and that’s followed by twenty minutes of scattershot, rushed action. To his credit, Cesare’s script is full of ideas, but the film never really takes the time to focus on any of them, and what’s worse is that the film spends an entire hour hanging out with its central cast of characters, but you don’t feel as though you’ve learned anything about them – their only notable traits being that almost everyone in this film is a horrible person. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, and obviously a film can have unlikeable leads and still manage to be engaging, compelling and entertaining, but the trouble is that practically all of Ghost Game’s tension relies upon feeling any sympathy towards Vin, Laura, and even the overtly standoffish (and vaguely predatory), Adrian. The trio are so cartoonishly incompatible that it’s difficult to suspend your disbelief enough to believe that Vin and Laura would have made it past their first date – particularly when the film often goes out of its way to demonstrate just how little the two have in common.
The only real exceptions from this are Bennett and Maas as mother Meg and daughter Sam, which unfortunately leads to another problem. Whereas some might take issue with Ghost Game’s depiction of an autistic child (which had me a little on-edge as a woman on the spectrum myself), I’m practically certain that Cesare characterised Sam with nothing but understanding and good intentions. To its credit, Ghost Game’s most thought-provoking thematic thread is its exploration of how parents of neurodivergent children can wrongly blame things that they don’t understand, or can’t control in other parts of their life, on their child – simply because they also struggle to understand said child and their differences. Unfortunately, in a film almost entirely bereft of other sympathetic characters, this leads to Sam being treated as some kind of emotional punching-bag for a large part of the narrative. An innocent being mistreated in order to be the film’s central source of empathy is something that I personally don’t have the time of day for. In spite of its good intentions, it’s the kind of representation that uses autistic characters as helpless sources of pity – something I’m sick of seeing. Nonetheless, I’m aware that Cesare wrote this character with a kind heart, and in spite of my personal discomfort, I have absolutely no ill will towards him as both a writer and as a person.
For what it’s worth, every actor here delivers a decent enough performance, and director Gevargizian makes good use of the location she’s working with, achieving some really nice shots and making the absolute most of the crumbling manor’s eerie natural lighting. A surprisingly gruesome moment during the final act and a fun little mock-doc segment hosted by Glorious (2022), director Rebekah McKendry, bring some spooky fun and shocks to the table, but other than that, there’s unfortunately little else of note to talk about. Ghost Game is, unfortunately, a reminder that even a film with an insanely talented cast and crew can still end up feeling unfulfilled and empty – regardless of the involvement of at least two of the most exciting horror creatives in this day and age. The trouble with haunted houses is that sometimes the ghosts that haunt them are invisible – they’re there alright, and they’re very scary too, but you just can’t see them.
Ghost Game had its International Premiere at Frightfest 2024
