Ghosts of War

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Last week's lineup of VOD releases lead me to 'Ghosts of War', as quite honestly, nothing else particularly interested me. But on top of that, I was sold on the concept of a supernatural World War II movie, and the fact that it comes from writer/director Erc Bress, who also did 'The Butterfly Effect' (which I love) and 'The Final Destination' (perhaps my favorite of the series).

Taking place in 1944, Nazi occupied France, Five American soldiers; Chris (Brenton Thwaites), Kirk (Theo Rossi​), Tappert (Kyle Gallner​), Eugene (Skylar Astin) and Butchie (Alan Ritchson), ​get assigned to hold a French Chateau, formerly occupied by the Nazi high command. Upon their arrival as a relief squad, the relieved soldiers have fear in their eyes for unknown reasons. The reasons present themselves within the first night, in the form of supernatural entities, providing some pretty disturbing imagery.

Soon, what's real and what isn't starts to become twisted, and these five battle-experienced soldiers find themselves facing something, the likes of which they can't imagine. Will these guys reluctantly accept their place and hold the fort down, despite these haunting images? Or will they take the easy way out, and risk getting court marshaled for abandoning their post? I'm not gonna say, but I will hint that this is one of those twist ending movies where the twist will either make or break the film for you.

Personally speaking, consider the film broken for yours truly, through said twist. The film kinda takes this leap and changes completely, and it just makes you ask what the hell just happened. Up until that particular point, I was rather with it. It was an interesting idea they had going - a spookhouse horror movie that was ballsy enough to show the ghostly, vengeful victims of a French family the Nazis tortured and murdered. It does play with a lot of the tropes we know so well nowadays, but it's also a DirectTV Original, so one can't be too harsh on tropes. It's honestly just the ending that kills it for me. But one might alternatively find it an interesting idea... even if it does feel like a cop out.

While I think the ending is something that more or less ruins an otherwise perfectly enjoyable horror movie, there's still a lot to like if you enjoy a good haunting flick. A lot of the imagery is pretty creepy, and while there's the odd jump scare, it doesn't overdo it. The movie's real feature is that it provides a great, ghostly, haunting, dreamy atmosphere for its setting. The mood for this is just right, and for a while, it's pretty much what you'd expect - not great, but passable for what it's trying to do. For a while, I was considering it for a decent Halloween watch... but that ending.

Check it out for yourself if you have access to it, and judge for yourself though. As I mentioned, some may think the ending is something cool. For me, though, it's not something at the top of my recommendation list, even if you're a horror fan. Aside from the atmosphere, there's nothing much that stands out here, but being a DirectTV Original, I'm not gonna dig into it too hard for being unoriginal. It's a minor curiosity, at best, and even then, basically forgettable.

2/5

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