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Eleven
contestants, participating in a reality-TV show,
are locked up inside an old prison with a horrible past
with the goal of winning 5 million Baht. The concept
of the game is that the contestants must provoke the
vengeful spirits while they also have to remain inside
the prison in order to win the money. Naturally, a real
ghost shows up and starts killing the contestants one
after the other. Will anyone survive this reality-TV
nightmare or will the vengeful spirit kill them all?
Ghost Game is one of the most controversial Thai horror
movies ever due to the fact that the story was built
around Cambodia's infamous Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum,
which was once a prison were people were tortured and
killed. The fact that someone exploited this story
in a cheap horror flick was something that Cambodia
wasn't exactly thrilled about, which led to them
banning the movie upon its release. In Thailand however,
Ghost Game was still a big success, but unfortunately
it was probably only due to the fact that it was so
controversial as this was one incredibly messy horror flick.
Taking the old "House On Haunted Hill" concept and
putting it in a reality-TV environment has been done
to death by now, and the lack of originality really
contributed to why Ghost Game ended up being such an
awful movie. The story revolves around eleven, young
contestants who are participating in a reality-TV
show where they have to spend some time in a haunted
prison in order to win a cash price. The movie doesn't
spend any time on developing their characters and
instead cuts directly to the ghostly visions - which
were surprisingly not scary.
Anyway, the TV-team has set up a couple of missions
that the contestants have to pursue in order to stay
in the contest. What I found strange about this was
that there wasn't anything really scary about the
challenges, it was the ghosts that made them "scary",
so what did the TV-team expect would happen? After
a little more than an hour however, we find out that
nothing that's happened in the entire movie really
matters as the movie takes a drastic turn and becomes
a silly ghost slasher.
I can not begin to tell you how badly edited this was.
It was messy, it had some serious continuinity errors
and it was, for most of the time, extremely confusing.
There was a potentially dramatic scene towards the
ending but since you never get to know the characters,
it failed at what it was trying to acheive. The fact
that there wasn't any character development might not
have been that bad though since the acting was
amateurish at best. Their performances oozed of inexperience
and it was obvious that there was more money put into
special effects and props than into a strong cast.
The only reason to watch this movie is due to the
cool settings and two pretty entertaining death scenes
but other than that, I see no reason to why you should
put yourself through this mess. If you're expecting a
creepy Asian ghost movie, you're wrong. The ghosts
are never ever remotely creepy and there are no jump
scenes to be found. Don't bother with this game, play
Monopoly instead as it's undoubtedly more exciting.
We get a knife through the head, a decapitation, and
a very cool death scene which I won't tell you about
here. Surprisingly gory for a ghost flick.
Standard stuff here, sounded like a very uninspired
rush job. Obviously the effort wasn't put into making
a solid soundtrack either.
Ghost Game is a poorly put together ghost flick which
doesn't know what direction it wants to take, and
therefore throws in as many subgenres in the mix as
possible - forgetting the most important factors in
a horror flick. This was less exhilarating than a game
of Monopoly so don't bother with this one.
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