Ghosts of War (2020):
Directed by: Eric Bress
Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Theo Rossi, Skylar Astin, Kyle Gallner, Alan Ritchson
Available on: Amazon Prime
There are bad horror films, and then there are horror films so utterly devoid of suspense, logic, or basic historical competence that you begin to question whether they were made by humans or by an algorithm trained on Reddit threads and supermarket DVDs. Ghosts of War falls, noisily and incoherently, into the latter category. It is a film so committed to wasting your time that, by the end, you feel not frightened or intrigued, but mugged.
We begin in 1944, or something roughly resembling it. A group of American soldiers—each one less likeable and more culturally unmoored than the last—is ordered to hold a French château previously occupied by the Germans. These men are supposedly battle-hardened veterans, but speak and behave like they’ve just wandered out of a frat party. Their dialogue is in no recognisable dialect of mid-century English. It’s all “bro” this and “WTF” that, as if someone watched Saving Private Ryan on mute and filled in the gaps with Call of Duty cutscenes and YouTube banter.
Their behaviour is worse. They pillage. They leer. They boast about atrocities. At times, they seem to forget the Germans are supposed to be the villains. I would call them anti-heroes, but that would imply the existence of a moral baseline. These are not flawed men doing their best in hard times—they are sociopaths in uniform, and not very bright ones either.
The ghosts, when they finally show up, are no better. They are not scary. They are not interesting. They flicker in mirrors, slam doors, appear behind people, and leave cryptic messages on the walls in what might be blood or possibly jam. You’ve seen every one of these moments before, and better done, usually in films made before you were born. The big twist is that the ghosts aren’t really ghosts, and the soldiers aren’t really soldiers. Or they are. Or they aren’t. The film throws a last-minute science fiction twist at you so tone-deaf and implausible that you’ll wonder whether you’ve accidentally switched to another film—or simply lost your grip on reality.
There’s a reveal involving VR headsets and Afghanistan. I am not making this up. You slog through 90 minutes of haunted-house nonsense, only to find out you were watching Jacob’s Ladder rewritten by someone who once read the back of a Black Mirror box set and then fell asleep during Inception. The final scenes try to pass off this nonsense as commentary on trauma, war guilt, or the ethics of military simulation, but by this point it’s far too late. Whatever message the film was aiming for is buried under layers of implausible exposition and shouted dialogue.
None of this is helped by the performances, which range from blank to shouty, with several actors delivering their lines like they’ve just read them for the first time. Brenton Thwaites tries to look tormented. He ends up looking lost. Theo Rossi is there to scowl and mutter about evil. The others shout, grimace, and occasionally die. You will not remember their names. You will not care.
Cinematography? Serviceable. Soundtrack? Forgettable. Pacing? Glacial. And as for atmosphere—well, the château looks the part, but is used with all the imagination of a haunted house ride at a bankrupt theme park. There is one scene where a character watches a ghost burn in a bathtub while murmuring something about fate. It is meant to be chilling. It is not.
To be clear, this is not a “so bad it’s good” experience. It is not enjoyably dumb or camp. It is simply a waste—of time, talent, and the two hours you could have spent watching something, anything else. I am not easily offended, but I do object to having my evening stolen by what amounts to a cinematic con job.
If you are a fan of war films, ghost stories, twist endings, or even basic narrative coherence—avoid. If you’re curious, read the Wikipedia summary, skip to the last ten minutes, and prepare to be insulted. But for your own sake, don’t sit through the whole thing. I did. And I may never forgive myself.
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