Ghoul kicks off with text explaining that back during the thirties, Joseph Stalin started a program of mass starvation in the Ukraine. This apparently led to cannibalism among some of the population. The film picks up in present day, where a team of American filmmakers arrives in The Ukraine to shoot a documentary on 20th century cannibalism. With nothing to do one night, they hold an impromptu seance, and end up provoking something really dangerous. The filmmakers are soon fighting to stay alive against a spirit with a violent agenda.
There are all sorts of specifics mentioned throughout Ghoul, but none of them matter much in the long run. The film plugs in these details into the found footage horror template, creating an illusion of distinction while doing nothing different at all. It is just another tale of dumb, unlikable people falling into supernatural danger with no real means of combating the evil. While there are effective jolts here and there, the movie is pretty boring when all is said and done. It ends up ignoring all the details that could have made the film special. It instead aspires for samness.
The setup initially brings hope that the movie might bring a different flavor to what has become one of the most tedious subgenres of film today. This is a very different culture, after all, with its own superstitions and urban legends. But then the movie just goes into a cabin in the woods, a setting so common that it's already been thoroughly satirized. And though the film introduces itself through historical specifics, it ends up getting to them in the plot through a clunky séance.
And thus, what we end up with is just another variation of every other dumb found footage horror movie. Once again, the viewer is presented with a series of bland, interchangeable characters. Once again, they stupidly court danger, and are incapable of finding ways to better their situation. This might be tolerable if it was actually well done, but predictably, it isn't. In some ways, this movie is extra dumb and lazy. To provide a means of exposition later in the film, it is shown that the characters have access to the Internet. But when things go wrong, the characters aren't bright enough to use that access to get help.
And of course, the film doesn't even look very good. At this point, found footage is just being used as a excuse not to put effort into the visuals of a film. The main goal now is just to build up to a succession of increasingly noisy jump scares. There's so much that this movie could have done with its setting and its historical background. It might have built the horror on something more than just another possession-based threat. But it doesn't want to work any harder than it has to. The acting carries on in that vein, with the cast doing nothing more than what is required for a movie of this caliber.
Ghoul isn't very long, but it is disproportionately tiring. It's the same old tricks applied to the same old plot for the umpteenth time, the movie unwilling to venture out into the unknown. It references specific bits of Soviet history, but does nothing with that information. It just trudges along, filling in the blanks of the found footage horror movie template. There isn't a whole lot to gain from sitting through the movie. One can fire up any number of found footage horror films and emerge with the same exact experience.
My Rating:
