Ghoul

I've been a Brian Keene fan for a while and Ghoul is one of my favorite tales of horror. When I heard there would be a movie I was pretty excited, but I didn't want to get involved in a lot of the hype. As someone who happens to be a Stephen King fan, I know all about bad movie adaptations.

Well, Ghoul isn't exactly a bad movie adaptation. It's just not a true adaptation. The movie does manage to convey the spirit of the book to a certain degree when it is not being hindered by the typical downfalls of every TV movie (the shaky acting, the questionable production, the lack of violence, etc.), but the scares and thrills just aren't there.

The ultimate difference between the book and the movie is that the book is a terrifying and visceral experience. The movie starts out with possibilities of being the same, but skews off in a different direction and becomes something akin to a Lifetime movie. The ghoul that was so frightening in the book almost becomes a Scooby Doo villain in the movie.

The book is terrifying and disturbing. The movie is only slightly disturbing and not very terrifying. The atmosphere of the movie is just too tame and too sterile to warrant terror. The disturbing factor is the relationship between Doug and his mother and Barry and his father, but the book handles it much better. So what the movie had going for it is nothing that hasn't already been done better before.

But, judging the movie for what it is, I'd still say it was entertaining up to a point. A decent and watchable film, but I just didn't find it to be a very memorable movie. If you want a great growing-up adventure movie about kids then Stand By Me does a much better job. If you want a great disturbing horror movie about kids then there is always Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door.

Ghoul just doesn't have that same zing.

Three kids - Timmy (Nolan Gould), Doug (Jacob Bila), and Barry (Trevor Harker) - are looking to spend the summer of '84 just having fun in their hidden fort. But a series of murders has them soon investigating the town's legend of the Ghoul, a monster that allegedly lives in the abandoned mine shafts. OOF! I copied a couple of original movies off of Chiller a few years back (this and The Monkey's Paw) and finally decided to give this one a spin. Based on the novel by Brian Keene, it is rough going and that is kind of surprising as director Gregory Wilson had previously made the disturbing-but-effective The Girl Next Door (2007). I haven't read any Keene but I think it is suffice to say he worships at the altar of Stephen King (for this book at least). It is almost like he is checking off a list of King themes like bullies, child abuse, childhood trauma, coming of age summers, family deaths, and "humans are the real monsters" moments. It might have worked in book form, but the adaptation is really bad here and some of the dialogue was cringe worthy. The film is ultimately sunk, however, by the terrible kid actors. Kid acting is one of filmdom's most precarious high wire acts. If done right, they can be amazing (see The Babadook). If done wrong, it can be disastrous (see, well, Ghoul). My friend said it best in that if you close your eyes while they are talking, it just sounds like some kids coldly reading the lines off a script they've just been handed.

It's the summer of '84. Timmy Graco (Nolan Gould) has his two friends and an underground hideout. Tragedy strikes when his grandfather (Barry Corbin) dies. His mother (Catherine Mary Stewart) is worried. There is a local legend of a mine. The three friends discover an underground network of tunnels.

This is pretty good. It's surprisingly good considering the user rating. I don't know anything about the book. Nolan Gould is a good child actor. I wish Barry Corbin would stay in the picture. The drunken father story turns out to be pretty good. As a horror, this needs more jump scares and a better creature feature. Still, this is pretty good low budget TV horror. It's relying on the kids, and they do a good job.

The Ghoul is a good film that could have been this years Super 8 if it had a bigger budget.

I've read some of the other review and others seem to criticize the cast. I think the cast, especially the kids, did a remarkable job. It was the script that was the problem. The dialogue was stiff and stuttering. On many occasions it brought me out of the movie.

Several of the choices of the director also worked against the quality and success of the film. Showing the ghoul as a silhouette at the beginning was a great way to start, but showing the ghoul clearly within the first 20 minutes ruined any build up or suspense that would have been better served in the climax.

My final complaint is the showing of the child abuse by the mother. In horror films based on novels certain things should be omitted as they change the tone to drastically. It was done in the film adaptation of Stephen Kings IT (Child gang-bang!?).

Anyway, still a good movie.

This is based on a Brian Keene novel. I wasted my time reading his dumpster fire The Rising which ended on a cliffhanger. He had ZERO plans to write a sequel until he got taken to task for it. His sequel was utter garbage that had an even worse ending. He said he couldn't think of any other way to end it. Any talented author would have several different endings in mind . But then a talented author wouldn't end a novel on a cliffhanger with no plans to finish the story. It should be a crime that a hack like this gets a movie based on his trash ideas but actual talented horror authors like Robert McCammon get left behind. Anyways, this movie was as bad of not worse than his dumpster fire novels. Don't waste your time.