BEFORE: Here we go, let's kick off that horror chain! Steve Coulter carries over from "Hangdog", and I'm exactly where I wanted to be. Horror is the genre for the next 27 films - well, mostly, because some allowances need to be made to keep the chain alive. There might be a couple of horror/comedies in here, one animated film about a monster, something that's technically a superhero film, and so on. Hopefully it all works out and makes some kind of sense out of the nonsense.
Before I start, here are the links that will get me through October: Tig Notaro, Dave Bautista, Ana de la Reguera, Anthony Molinari, Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, Ben Chaplin, Brian Cox, Naomi Watts, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Juan Riedinger, Adam Brody & Kyle Gallner, Jenna Ortega, MIa Goth, John Ralston, Mark O'Brien, Kerry Bishe, Celeste O'Connor. Yes, that's only 18 links, but really, it's all I need. Once somebody gets into acting in the horror genre apparently it leads to a lot of other work.
THE PLOT: Finding a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home turns Kevin's family into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest investigate the mystery of Ernest's past, they become a target of the CIA.
AFTER: I'm going to start this year's horror chain with a ghost movie, and also end it with a ghost movie - you can probably guess which one from the links above. But this year's Shocktober will also be about finishing off (or at least getting current with) a few notable franchises. I watched every "Purge" film except for ONE, because it didn't link to the others, and that's the kind of thing my OCD has been itching to resolve. The "Scream" franchise also made TWO new movies since I watched the first four (was it four? I want to say it was four) so I'll deal with them as well. I've got a lot of movies and not a lot of time, what with NY Comic-Con and the festivals at my second job, so look, if I don't make it to Halloween on time, I might have to run horror movies into November, but I want to finish everything by October 31 and close up shop until Thanksgiving. The chain is telling me that's the right thing to do - or it's the spooky voices in my head, which sounds a little more disconcerting.
The connection here to the "Ghostbusters" franchise is that the other ghost film established the new rules for ghosts - everyone can see them, not just the people they're haunting. Nobody can touch them, but they can touch people and instill them with spooky energy - what is a ghost, after all, but a dead person's energy with a little bit of their soul (or whatever) telling them that they can't move on until something particular gets resolved? Ghosts also can't talk in this film, so David Harbour has to harness those silent movie techniques, just like Charlie Day did in "Fool's Paradise" as a (mostly) mute mental patient. Yeah, the ghost in this film is also a little mentally challenged, he doesn't really remember much about his life because, well, his brain died with his body, so he's just like a shadow, or spectre, of his former living self. Look, I don't think ghosts are real, but if they were, they'd have to follow a set of rules regarding energy and its presence in the material world, so it's kind of nice that some writer did a little thinking about this, I suppose.
There are a couple more modern updates here, though - like teen Kevin isn't scared by the ghost in his family's new house AT ALL, he's already pre-over it. Why? Because there are so many more scary things in his life already, like climate change, the polluted oceans and the idea that eventually the earth's going to run out of natural resources within his lifetime, not to mention the threat of nuclear war, the upcoming election and let's throw in racism and cop-killings while we're at it, plus the general inequality of being a person of color in today's world. Also, his family has moved like five times in the last few years, hoping for a "fresh start". Sorry, but a ghost doesn't even make his list of things to be scared of - that's a bit of a unique twist on a ghost story right there. So he befriends the ghost instead, and manages to get the first-ever video of a ghost, which his father wants to keep secret from his mother, but then uploads to YouTube for some reason. NITPICK POINT: those two things would seem to be inconsistent.
The video gets seen by millions, and for some other unknown reason, people believe it is a ghost and really, that doesn't make sense either because people should be skeptical of any ghost or demon or Bigfoot video they see on the internet. There's a 99.9% chance it's a fake, right? That would be the most reasonable conclusion, but here everyone believes it and Ernest the ghost becomes a viral media sensation. Um, sure, if the movie keeps wanting to put up its own roadblocks to make things more difficult for the characters, I guess it has a right to do that.
But the main goal here is to find out what, if anything, is unresolved and therefore preventing Ernest (not his real name) from crossing over - assuming that's what supposed to happen, so much is unclear because being a ghost doesn't come with a Handbook for the Recently Deceased. So Kevin and his new maybe-girlfriend are kind of flying blind, they know that there's a box with a stuffed animal in it, and also that Ernest had a reaction when he saw a young blonde girl at a playground, so maybe he had a daughter? Damn, if only somebody's brain didn't turn to swiss cheese when they die.
Meanwhile, there's a division of the CIA that apparently spent years trying to prove that ghosts exist, and they never even came close. One paranormal scientist who wrote a book about how all ghosts sightings ever turn out to be fake, but as soon as she sees the video from the Presley family, she instantly KNOWS that it's real. OK, umm, but HOW? She gets in touch with her old boss from the CIA (Steve Coulter, of course, that sly dog) and they dig out the old ghost-busting tools and they're convinced this is the one, what they've been waiting for all this time, they're going to catch a ghost, and, umm, do something with it. This is also unclear, maybe they're going to analyze its energy and solve the world's problems, or maybe I fell asleep at the part where they explained this, I'm not sure.
Well, anyway, it's a bit of a soft start to this year's horror chain. You really don't want to start out with something truly scary, I think it's better to ease into it, like a hot tub or a very cold pool. This is mostly a non-intense comedy, except for one part where the ghost makes his own face melt like those Nazis in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". The part with the TV medium and her crew coming to the haunted house to film the ghost was a real narrative dead-end, like why even have this in the movie if it goes absolutely nowhere?
I'm proud that after all these years, my blog is still ad-free, I don't get any revenue from the site, not even from telling you that the season 4 premiere of "Ghosts" will air on CBS October 16, and after that it will be streaming on the Paramount+ service. Nope, not a dime for that, so I must be doing something wrong.
Also starring Anthony Mackie (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), David Harbour (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Jahi Di'Allo Winston (last seen in "Proud Mary"), Tig Notaro (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Erica Ash (last seen in "All I Wish"), Jennifer Coolidge (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Faith Ford, Niles Fitch (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Isabella Russo, Scott A. Martin (last seen in "Fire With Fire"), Jo-Ann Robinson, Tom Bower (last seen in "The Killer Inside Me"), Dr. Phil McGraw (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Sean Boyd (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Nicholas X. Parsons (also last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Peggy Walton-Walker (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Sherri Eakin (last seen in "The Hollars"), Morgan Hernard (last seen in "Allegiant"), Kyler Porche (last seen in "When We First Met"), Yoshio Maki, Ned Yousef (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Naoko Okamoto, Mike Mayhall, Adam Stephenson (last seen in "Geostorm"), Ellen B. Williams, Sarah Voigt, K Steele (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Jophielle Love (also last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Luna Craig, Hawn Tran (last seen in "Heist"), Fionn Camp, Lara Grice (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Alasdair Flagella, Christopher Michael Clarke, Ann Mahoney (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Jackson Kelly, Liam Kelly, Lucy Faust (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), Creek Wilson (last seen in "Ma"), Gabe Bowling, Jackson Campbell, Anisa Kharnvongsa, Marcha Kia, Chelsea London Lloyd, Steph Martinez, Mia Schauffler, Olivia Shatsky, Lena Stamm, Kat Conner Sterling
with archive footage of Demi Moore (last seen in "LOL"), Patrick Swayze (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Pat Sajak (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Vanna White.
RATING: 5 out of 10 boxes to unload from the moving truck
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