Ghosts of War (2020) Movie Review

I haven’t seen anyone talk about this movie. Ghosts of War. So I thought I’ll talk about it instead. 

Directed by Eric Bress, Ghosts of War is a 2020 release that follows five allied soldiers during the second world war as they have to protect a mansion against Nazi soldiers in occupied France. 

But what they realise later on is that the mansion they are protecting is trying to kill them.

That is because it is haunted by the previous family who lived there. I’m going to talk heavily about the plot of the movie so spoiler warning ahead. The reason I decided to watch this movie is because of the plot. That idea of five soldiers alone in a haunted house is a very int eresting take on this type of horror movie.

Normally, in a movie like this. The people who are going to be haunted is a family that has nothing special about them. Just your average bystander. 

What this does is it gives the supernatural beings possessing the house an advantage. But with this movie, the ghosts and spirits are up against soldiers trained to kill. 

That gives a nice twist to this type of supernatural horror movie. These soldiers have killed many German Nazi’s and have been in the thick of a devastating war.  So up against a force that is supernatural poses an interesting conundrum. You automatically do not write the soldiers off. 

Compared to a standard horror movie. You know that the family in these scenarios are screwed.  So that concept of soldiers against an enemy they do not understand can play a compelling story.

But this film fails to tell that compelling story. Simplicity should have been the mantra for this film because Ghosts of War does way too much.

By the start you are amused by the plot but by the end your focus loses all attention from the idea that this film was supposed to be a horror movie. Because those five soldiers are not actually World War Two soldiers but instead soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and because they were all severely injured they were in a virtual reality for recovery purposes. 

It begs the question why add such a convoluted plot twist. I should also mention the family that was haunting the soldiers were actually killed in Afghanistan as these five soldiers watched them be viciously murdered by ISIS terrorists. And the mother who was beaten but not killed at this point cursed the five soldiers. 

This meant that in the virtual reality world of occupied France, the dead Afghan family was some kind of virus that inhibited the virtual reality as well.

I ask again, why?

That plot twist adds so many questions to the film because these soldiers were monitored by doctors yet they didn’t realise that they were being haunted in virtual reality. And the doctors should have known because they have projections of what the soldiers can see in the virtual world. It does too much. This movie should have stayed with the plot line of five soldiers getting haunted in a house. 

But what I think happened was the director who also wrote this movie probably wanted to do something different with the genre. I respect that. To try and give the audience a different experience is a commendable target. But it worked against him. And what also worked against him is the budget because clearly they didn’t have enough special effects money left.

This movie looks B-rated and cheap. 

So when you see the haunted family, you're not scared. You will probably be more amused on how fake the special effects are. 

But that shouldn’t be an issue. Because horror is one of those genres that can be done on the cheap. It’s all about what you see but especially what you don’t see that makes horror scary. And Ghosts of War was bad when it came to the scary scenes. They opted to go down the jump scare route.

I’m fine with that style of horror but because it is overused it has to be top notch. It’s like lowbrow comedy. It’s easy and effective but you gotta do it perfectly in order for it to be funny. The greatest comedy of all time, Superbad is lowbrow but it executes it’s lowbrow comedy at a high level. It’s the same process with horror. You can’t just add a jump scare and hope for the best. It has to be crafted in a way that oozes tension. I need to be fearful of what will happen next.

With Ghosts of War, I knew when the horror scenes were going to happen and predicted when these ghosts were going to do the classic scream in front of the camera. And again, when you see the ghosts. The special effects take away their scary demeanor. 

But even with the special effects being bad, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be rooting for the ghosts. Because halfway through the movie, German soldiers attack the mansion and the ghosts help the allied soldiers out. And at that point onwards, I was always confused if I was supposed to think these ghosts were our friends. 

You would think the ghosts that helped our five soldiers defeat a barrage of German soldiers are the good guys as well.

So that took away another layer of horror from the ghosts. 

I think there is an important message in Ghosts of War about the simplicity in film.

This movie did way too much for an hour and a half runtime. If Eric Bress kept the story as five soldiers against a haunted house. That would have made for an interesting twist to the horror genre. But instead we got virtual reality and Muslim curses. 

There is a great story beneath this movie that got bombarded by other ideas. 

Ghosts of War has already become a ghost of a movie.