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REVIEW: ‘Ghost House’ is a Skillful, Moody Ghost Story

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ghost house movie review ihorror

A young American woman named Julie (Scout Taylor-Compton) is haunted by an angry spirit after she is tricked into desecrating an ancient Thai shrine known as a Ghost House in this thrilling movie of the same name.  Ghost Houses are located all around the Thai landscape and regarded as sacred. According to lore, they offer places for those who have passed to occupy themselves so they don’t bother the living.

Julie and her boyfriend Jim (James Landry Hebert) are on a special vacation in Thailand wherein he aims to ask for her hand. But things take a haunting turn after they meet two British lads with a more nefarious agenda.

Immediately after taking a small effigy wrapped in cloth from one of these niches, she becomes possessed by a vengeful, scorned crone who happens to hate young women because they remind her of her cheating husband.  Burned to death in an act of her own vengeance, the spirit is scarred and hideous as she makes frequent appearances at unexpected times.

Look for a creepy scene involving a digital camera and a photo scroll.

Early on, local spiritualists are able to expel the ghost from Julie’s body, but it’s not over. The specter is determined to repossess her and there are only three days in which to make sure that doesn’t happen because if it does, there is nothing anyone can do and Julie will cross over for good.

Ghost House is the Taken of the supernatural realm as Julie’s fiancé does everything he can to expel the curse with the help of a local taxi driver named Gogo (Michael S. New). During this time Julie slips in and out of the spiritual world while the ghost does the same.

Rich Ragsdale is at the helm of this very effective and moody horror movie. He’s got the goods as far as his cinematographer, Pierluigi Malavasi, who never wastes good lighting or storybook location scenery, and the score done by Ragsdale himself creates an atmosphere of melodic haunts.

With Ragsdale locking in those two elements with effective results, the rest is left to his cast which we all know can be hit-or-miss in these movies. Luckily for us, Ragsdale keeps them focused and convincing.

Taylor-Compton as Julie is non-perfunctory. She goes from confident and self-actualized to haggard, disoriented and genuinely terrified. It’s this dedication to the character that sells a big part of the movie.

James Landry Hebert as her fiancé Jim makes realistic choices to help Julie recover as they go from real life applications into the depths of incorporeal first aid.

This is also a travelogue of exotic Thailand and is filled with local characters who don’t turn off their accents or traditions to meet with the PC police of the west. This isn’t homogenized filmmaking; you get the location, you see the people who live there too.

Ghost House makes no attempts at redefining its Tartan Asia Extreme roots, but the soil in which it’s planted is rich with talent, a beautiful score, stunning cinematography and an engaging story. The result is an overall experience ripe with satisfying supernatural low-hanging fruit.

Ghost House is currently available to rent or buy on Amazon or iTunes and other streaming services.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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