GHOST HOUSE (2017)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Rich Ragsdale
Writer:       Kevin O’Sullivan, Jason Chase Tyrrell
Producer:  Kevin Ragsdale, Veronica Radaelli
Stars:     James Landry Hebert, Scout Taylor-Compton, Mark Boone Junior, Russell Geoffrey Banks, Richard Gray, Elana Krausz, Kevin Ragsdale, Wenchu Yang, Michael New

Review Score:

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Summary:

A man vacationing in Thailand must save his possessed fiancée from an evil spirit after she inadvertently disturbs a ceremonial shrine.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Bangkok, Thailand – Upon exiting the airport, American tourist Jim and his photographer girlfriend Julie Richardson befriend local guide Gogo, who drives the couple to their hotel. Julie becomes fascinated with Thai ghost houses, which Gogo explains are small shrines placed outside buildings for spirits to inhabit so they do not disturb the living.

While touring the city, Jim proposes to Julie over dinner. Julie happily says yes.

Jim and Julie befriend British tourists Robert and Billy, who are staying in the same hotel. The four of them go out drinking together. While Robert insists on taking Jim into a strip club, Billy stays outside talking to Julie. Billy gets Julie to remove her scarf, which he hides in his pocket.

Robert convinces Jim and Julie to take a trip into the country to see a forest full of ghost houses. Billy privately tells Robert he is having second thoughts about bringing harm to Julie. Because of the strip club detour as well as Julie’s friendliness with Billy, Jim and Julie have a drunken argument about infidelity. The quartet arrives at the remote forest.

Billy gives Julie’s scarf to Robert. Robert secretly wraps a piece of the scarf around a small stone idol and places it in a ghost house. Robert then convinces Julie to take the idol. When she does, Robert and Billy run back to their car and drive away. Julie sees a terrifying vision of an old woman.

Day 1 – Julie grows ill as she continues experiencing haunting visions in the forest. Jim calls Gogo to come pick them up.

Gogo races Jim and Julie to the nearby village where he grew up. A village woman becomes frightened when she examines Julie and sees an eyeball looking back at her from Julie’s throat.

Gogo tells Jim about a Japanese woman who left her home to marry a Thai man. The man had an affair with a servant girl, which caused his wife to burn down their home in a jealous rage. However, the man and his mistress escaped the blaze while the woman died in the fire and became a vengeful spirit. Gogo explains that the angry ghost, known as a watabe, is now taking over Julie because Julie tried to take something that belonged to her ghost house.

A monk prays over Julie, who is partially possessed, as her visions continue into the night. Seemingly recovered in the morning, Gogo takes Jim and Julie back to their hotel.

Day 2 – Julie talks Jim out of calling the police regarding Robert and Billy. Jim and Julie have sex, but it ends abruptly when Julie sees another vision of the ghost woman.

Jim asks the hotel clerk about the British guests. The clerk mentions that the two men were with a British woman when they checked out earlier.

While left alone, Julie experiences haunting visions that cause her to collapse in the hotel hallway. Jim has Julie rushed to a hospital. The doctor says that Julie appears physically fine. The doctor adds that a British tourist had the same affliction before suddenly recovering the day before.

Gogo rushes Jim to the airport. Jim finds Robert and Billy with Robert’s girlfriend. Jim angrily confronts Robert. Robert chokes Jim to the ground and leaves. Billy passes Jim contact information for a man named Reno whom he claims can help.

Jim tracks down Reno at an underground fetish club. Reno, an American opportunist who dabbles in shamanism, explains that to save Julie, Jim needs to transfer the ghost to another person. Back in the city, Jim runs Robert’s ruse on tourists Cal and Gwen, but is ultimately unable to go through with cursing them.

Jim instead sneaks Julie out of the hospital. Jim then kidnaps Reno at gunpoint, demanding that Reno help him find another way to save Julie.

Day 3 – With Julie still experiencing haunting visions, Gogo drives Jim, Julie, and Reno into the country. Gogo’s van is forced to stop due to an accident blocking the road. Julie wanders off into the forest, becomes possessed, and collapses.

Reno directs Jim and Gogo to carry Julie to a shack in the forest where they get a man to take them by boat to a witch doctor. The witch doctor tells Jim that he must give up something important to make the ghost leave. Jim gives her Julie’s engagement ring. The witch doctor clarifies that Jim needs to give up a part of himself, suggesting he should sever a finger. Jim and Gogo plead for the witch doctor to try an exorcism using only the ring.

The witch doctor begins performing her ritual. The ghost exits Julie and becomes a physical entity. The ghost kills the shamans working with the witch doctor and bleeds into Julie’s mouth. Jim quickly cuts off his finger. The witch doctor then finishes the ritual, which banishes the ghost.

Gogo says goodbye to Jim and Julie at the airport. Tourists Cal and Gwen consider purchasing a ghost house at a gift shop.

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Review:

American tourists Jim and Julie are barely in Bangkok for a full movie minute when they get their first taste of Thai culture’s darker side.  Local guide Gogo points out a ghost house, a small shrine placed outside dwellings for spirits to inhabit so they leave the main homes alone, and Julie develops an instant fascination.  How frighteningly foretelling that one of these tiny towers is only hours away from taking their Thailand tour on a terrifying turn.

Over dinner, Jim pops a question to which Julie excitedly answers, “yes!”  The loving couple then does what anyone would to intimately celebrate their engagement in an exotic locale: they befriend two random British blokes in the hotel lobby and go on a bender that stops at a bright neon strip club.

This is the exact moment when “Ghost House” severs all ties with its centerpiece pair as people worth giving two hoots about.  What’s weird is that “Ghost House” otherwise follows fright film formula front to back.  Yet the movie oddly dismisses concern for putting pleasant protagonists in a predicament they don’t deserve so an audience can feel some sympathy.

Instead, Jim is instantly made an inconsiderate cad who would leave his new fiancée on a sidewalk while he gets a lap dance.  From the high of the most romantic moment of their relationship to the low of drunkenly accusing each other of infidelity, Jim and Julie squeeze out all potential to be a cute couple in favor of bizarrely bickering over who can impress the strangers they’ve partnered with.

You see, their new Englishmen friends want to take the husband and wife-to-be to the country to look at a forest full of ghost houses.  Even in a haze of booze and g-strings, Jim isn’t so sure a midnight run with two men they just met is a hot idea.  Julie angrily overrules Jim’s common sense.  You got to go to a strip club, I get to go on a photo excursion to parts unknown in a weird van, she illogically reasons.  With this one poorly considered moment, the script shifts culpability for what is about to happen onto Julie, whose only sin is picking the wrong time to teach her fiancé a lesson in considering her needs.

At a forest ghost house, the British buds secretly tie one of Julie’s personal possessions around a small idol and then convince Julie to take it.  Julie does, unleashing the wrath of a malevolent spirit who is none too pleased about her ghost house items being disturbed… when Julie does it anyway.  The ghost appears perfectly fine with the Englishman touching the idol to put something on it, since nothing happens to him.  Anyway, the Brits beat feet, Julie collapses from demonic possession, and now it is up to Jim to figure out how to exorcise the evil.

“Ghost House” is a standard vengeful ghost yarn whose only unique draw is the Thailand backdrop behind its setting and mythology.  Move everything to Japan and you basically have a diluted take on “The Grudge.”  Move it to America and you basically have a diluted Westernized remake of “The Grudge.”

In fact, in an “I’m not quite sure what the filmmakers were thinking” amalgamation of Asian superstitions, a character explains that the ghost in “Ghost House” is actually a Japanese woman who was wronged by a Thai man before turning evil.  Instead of black hair, the ghost has graying white locks, yet retains the characteristic gaping maw of J-horror sirens while adding marionette movements in silhouette as her chief means of being creepy.

Elaborating further on any details of the premise or the production would be a lot like spinning in a circle.  “Ghost House” essentially fights a war of redundancy on two fronts.  The first is within the movie itself, through repeated instances of haunting vision jump scares causing Scout Taylor-Compton to cower.  The second is within the supernatural story subgenre as a whole, where poltergeist/possession tales like this one are a penny per pound.

Brothers Rich and Kevin Ragsdale, who conceived the story together and respectively directed and produced the movie, milk some mileage out of the Bangkok backgrounds, lending an atypical Thai flavor that visually amplifies the look through the locations.  Beyond that, “Ghost House’s” predictable plot and uninteresting characters combine to wear a hat so old, it crumbles to dust from the touch of all the room temperature thrills.

Review Score:  40

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