Main cast: Brenton Thwaites (Chris), Theo Rossi (Kirk), Skylar Astin (Eugene), Kyle Gallner (Tappert), Alan Ritchson (Butchie), and Billy Zane (Dr Engel)
Director: Eric Bress

Maybe it’s something in the air or the way the cards are dealt, but recently, I’ve reviewed a few things that throw twists my way and completely ruin things up. Ghosts of War is another one of those things, sigh.

Basically, we have a bunch of soldiers holding put in a French chateau during World War 2. Only, as one of them, Eugene, learns from a diary he found in that place, this place was a site of Nazi brutality—the family was butchered in horrific ways by the Nazi for harboring and helping Jewish refugees escape the border. Sure enough, jump scares begin to take place and make the guys wonder whether the place is haunted, and should that be true, whether the ghosts are malevolent in nature.

For the most part, this is a pretty standard haunted house movie, with a coat of soldierly stuff painted over the whole thing. Still, most of the main characters are well drawn enough to engage my attention. Chris is the baby-faced sensible one, Eugene seems to be the brain of the gang, and Tappert is the quiet and possibly crazy one. The other two guys are just sort of there, but the three more-developed characters are good enough to keep things interesting.

Sure, the jump scares and all are straight out of the handbook for horror movie makers, but the question of whether the ghosts being on the soldiers’ side… or not… manages to keep things intriguing too. I am intrigued by the possibility that things may not be so formulaic in this movie after all.

Then, towards the end, the twist is revealed. Now, this twist makes sense, considering some of the details woven into the movie up to that point. However, it is also the least possible revelation considering the questions raised by these details. Worse, the movie then introduces yet another twist in its last ten minutes or so, and then ends the movie just as the development of this twist is about to begin. Maybe director-cum-screenwriter Eric Bress is hoping that the same deity that blessed M Night Shyamalan with a career will grant him a sequel, but that fellow is both overplaying his hand—coming off like a pretentious try-hard film student in the process—and making sure that the audience will come away feeling that they have been played, and some of them will not be too happy with that.

Me, I think that, with all things considered, I still like Ghosts of War in a way. It tries to be something different, and even if the end result were quite a misfire, I appreciated the effort. Still, the big reveal ends up making the whole thing far less interesting than it would otherwise be, and that’s tantamount to Mr Bress pulling down his pants in public, only to reveal something that invited eye rolls rather than gasps of appreciation.

All in all, this is a good try, but maybe these folks should try again.