GHOST SON

Stacey and Mark lead a happy life in Africa, but one day Mark has an accident and loses his life. Stacey, devastated by grief, begins to see Mark everywhere and dreams about him every night, even having sex with him. A few months later, however, Stacey realizes she is pregnant and Martin is born, a strange child who shows a morbid attachment to his mother from the start. But Martin's behavior becomes increasingly strange and ambiguous, leading Stacey to think that the child is a link between her and the restless spirit of Mark. Lamberto Bava is back. After the disastrous and little "visible" "The Torturer," released only for the home video market in 2005, here comes Bava Jr. again in the horror scene with "Ghost Son," a product, this time, resulting from a rich collaboration between Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and South Africa for a distribution aimed at the big screen. Unfortunately, however, the result is not much better compared to the 2005 short film, and the air of "wasted opportunity" is felt everywhere in this feature-length movie. The mid-high budget in the hands of the director and the group of excellent actors at his disposal did not manage to prevent the result from being a shabby thriller that struggles with difficulty between the already seen and the most absolute boredom. The basic story is not particularly interesting, and, according to the director's own statements, it was supposed to be a supernatural love story that would wink at the "Ghost" that launched Demi Moore into the star system. In fact, everything starts with a love story, and the ending, swayed by good feelings, confirms this, but the "horror" twist that the film gains with the passing of the minutes is little plausible and really clashes too much with the rest of the story: the idea of the possessed child is not bad, in fact, it is probably the truly successful component of the film, but imagining the ghost's turning evil has no foundation and seems like an idea so forced that it suggests it was thought up simply due to a lack of a "quid" to move the plot forward. The one and a half hours of the film drag on too slowly, and the real lack of climax scenes or significant events in the narrative cause the viewer to yawn more than once. This is also caused by a poor management of the moments of suspense that the film could have benefited from, instead, everything that could create tension is not minimally exploited, resolving every evocative moment into boredom. Another major flaw of "Ghost Son" is the descent into involuntary ridicule on more than one occasion, such as the comical and Fantozzian geyser of vomit that hits the protagonist trying to make her son burp or the moment when the possessed child speaks with the voice of the deceased father. The cast, as previously mentioned, is certainly of good level even if not all the faces have been used to their full potential: too little space is given to the character played by the talented Pete Postlethwaite ("The Lost World"; "Dragonheart"), the benevolent face of John Hannah ("Sliding Doors"; "The Mummy") seems ill-suited for the role of the villain, while Laura Harring ("Mulholland Drive"; "The Punisher") is rather convincing, even if the viewer's attention falls more frequently on her charms than on her acting performance. The special effects by Sergio Stivaletti are, as always, of excellent level and decidedly unobtrusive, as is the photography by Giovanni Canevari and the music by Paolo Vivaldi; but in general, one cannot certainly consider "Ghost Son" a successful film, quite the opposite... We await a new attempt by Lamberto Bava, but failing so spectacularly with a production of this kind does not bode well for the future.