Review of Ghost Story (1981) by John W — 20 Sep 2007

Ghost Story is based on the pretty frightening novel by Peter Straub. The movie, fails to deliver the same thrills. The movie itself has an all star cast. Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr... you might not know the names, but trust me, they are film legends. But even the talented cast can't pull this mediocre thriller through as a winner. The makers decide to throw a bunch of weight into special effects that being 1981, just don't look good. The entire feel of the film is uneven. It attempts to blend several stories into an overall narrative like the book, but does it with much less grace. The entire back story, involving the Chowder Society feels like an awkward digression.

To cover all the points I'll just really quickly run them off. The acting, not bad, nothing spectacular. Alice Krige does a pretty good job of looking creepy as hell (you guys might know her as the religious nut woman from Silent Hill) but in this movie she spends most of her time naked, uttering strange phrases. Unsettling- yes. Scary- no. The pacing of the movie is terrible, it attempts to cover a whole lot of ground through flashbacks and the telling of "ghost stories" but the film doesn't pull it all together. Is it scary, no. No it is not. It's jump scenes are hackneyed and all the death scenes follow the same formula. So, what we have is a collection of events that the film carelessly throws together, and fails to make any of them scary. Oh, and I forgot, we get a face full of Craig Wasson fully nude. Yum, that's what I want to see. So beyond plenty of unsettling nudity this film truly has little to offer. In the end, I'd stay away, Ghost Story ends up being a web of anecdotes that in the end fold into on disappointing film.