GHOST HOUSE * USA / Thailand 2017 Dir: Rich Ragsdale 89 mins
This dated, resolutely unfrightening attempt to jump-start the corpse of early 2000’s J-horror-inspired supernatural horror blows its load in the opening minutes with a brazen ghostly assault on a young woman in an alleyway.
Subsequently, unlikeable American couple James Landry Hebert and Scout Taylor-Compton hook up for no convincing reason with a pair of unlikeable British tourists in Bangkok and end up tampering with a local “ghost house”, awakening a malevolent femme spook. So lacking in fresh ideas and genuine scares that it has not one but two pointless, unsexy sex scenes, this feature length insult to Thai culture devolves into a series of repetitive scenes in which Scout Taylor-Compton is either a) unconscious, b) wandering around whimpering with a torch, c) strapped to a gurney or d) in a general state of near-hysteria. Weighed down with drab exposition and executed in the laziest possible fashion, it falls back constantly on LOUD jump scares to the point where you will also yearn to be either a) or c), and would much rather be experiencing b) and d).
Review by Steven West