Pay the Ghost Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: After his son disappears, a man believes a supernatural force is abducting children each Halloween.

Review: Well, it's October again so that means another year of Halloween horror movies. I intended to finish reviewing all the remaining stragglers, but there are a lot more than I imagined. More to the point, most of the backlog movies are direct to DVD pieces of shit that are sold for ripoff prices considering how low budget and pathetic they are. I have a comprehensive list in which I looked at all their trailers, laughed at their imdb ratings, and considered their prices...yeah...what I review this year was either online for free or one of the rare films I'd pay to see. Because of that, this will be the year I tap into family movies which coincides nicely with this newer Halloween horror movie, "Pay the Ghost." While this film considers itself an addition to the horror genre, had they cut out the pointless deaths, this could have probably passed for a slightly darker kids movie. It's not that this movie is absolutely terrible, but it did not know what it wanted to be and was far too matter of fact with its blatant idiocy.

The core concept of the story is actually creative: more kids disappear, and are never found, on Halloween than any other day...in New York City at least. I highly doubt that is true, but I can roll with it. Unfortunately, that plot line is, more or less, the only story aspect that makes sense throughout the film as we are given ridiculous scenarios, nonsensical kills, and incoherent contrivances out the ass. You have Nicolas Cage, not turning in a zany performance, who is the father of an abducted son. It's obvious this is a paycheck movie for him, but he still turns in a commendable performance surprisingly. Sadly I can't say the same for the emotionless drone son, and they included Lori from "The Walking Dead" still playing Lori it would seem; does this woman play anything other than insufferable bitches?!

They do not play up the Halloween holiday properly except for the first 15 minutes or so. Instead, the horror is supposed to come in the form of vultures flying around, a jump scare-happy antagonist, and just plain bizarre situations. In fact, most of the creepy moments happen simply for the sake of keeping the pacing up despite never having a reason to occur. All of the character deaths make no sense as the ghost magically has an omniscient knowledge of those who figure out her identity. Yet...she never kills the parents, some random blind dude who knows everything, a detective who disappears from the script 2/3 of the way in, and a convenient Celtic enthusiast who serves to explain the plot? Right. As it would turn out, some time in the 1600s, a woman and her children were blamed for a plague and burned alive on Halloween. Every Halloween since, she steals 3 children from NYC as some ill-defined sense of retribution. Thanks to a well placed contrivance, each year you have a chance to free the previous year's children if you pull them out of Kayako-land I suppose. Of course Nicky Cage does this, no thanks to Lori, and he also inadvertently frees all the spirits of past children who, seemingly, get rid of the evil ghost. The movie has a Hollywood ending, but they just had to throw in a pointless final zinger. My fucking goodness.

There was potential here, however, the story appears to have undergone massive rewrites or heavy editing. I could forgive many of the faults had they removed the overtly horror elements and made this a family film. I'm not saying this needs to be reduced to "Sesame Street" levels, but this could have been toned down to the likes of "Hocus Pocus." Although this film is loaded with stupid moments and shenanigans galore, it's actually more on the mediocre side than anything. The production is competent, the premise is interesting, and the actors try to work with the material the best they can. With a few tweaks this could have been significantly better, but, alas, this is what we get. I'd say this is possibly worth a view, but your expectations need to be fairly low or you have another reason to be interested. It's certainly not the worst Halloween horror movie I've reviewed, but you'd probably be better off watching "Halloween" for the millionth time or seeking out "Trick 'r Treat."

Notable Moment: When we see all the ghostly children that have been abducted over the centuries. Definitely a cool yet eerie scene.

Final Rating: 5/10