Review of The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) by Heather M — 14 Jul 2009

A moderately entertaining evil-animal suspense movie, The Ghost and The Darkness spends too much time with the railroad situation and not enough time with the killer-lions. I didn't particularly care about the historical accuracy or the construction of a bridge in Africa which represents everything wrong with European colonialization. Ultimately we're supposed to get the feeling that the lions are fighting against this taking over of their land by men, but the lions always target the wrong people. In the end, the men who are doing the most damage to the animals' environment get away with it, while the pawns are the only ones to suffer (except for a couple of white men who aren't actually there to build the bridge, but to help their fellow man). Am I making too much of this? Well, the movie spends some time explaining that these lions are not ordinary lions. If they were really something other than that, it would probably have worked better if they'd gone after the right people. So while they seem to be imbued with some intelligence (through myth, lore, superstition, whatever it is), their blind killing sprees don't really attest to anything other than animals who have tasted the blood of man and needs more, more, more (like the great white shark in Jaws). Again, if the intention is not there, why do the filmmakers waste time setting it up?

Anyway, if you don't care too much for morals in your creature features (or you just like Fox's When Animals Attack series), you will probably enjoy The Ghost and The Darkness much more than I did. It's definitely not overly dull, and I guess the prospect of thinking-lions should work well for the same reasons that I thought thinking-sharks worked well in Deep Blue Sea should be enough to keep most intrigued.