It is difficult to know where to begin with Ghosts of War, a new thriller from writer-director Eric Bress. The film at first appears for all the world to be a typical haunted-mansion movie, but Bress never delivers on a barely promising conceit.
Set sometime in the ‘40s, the film follows a group of five US soldiers tasked to protect a French castle from Nazi capture. According to orders given by their commanding officers, the castle could serve as a stronghold for either side of the conflict, and obviously, American forces would rather it be theirs. While the soldiers may be ready for skirmishes with the Nazi insurgency, they aren’t quite prepared for the spirits that haunt the mansion’s hallways.
The soldiers facing this task are mostly interchangeable. Chris (Brenton Thwaites), is the de facto leader group and the main protagonist. Tappert (Kyle Gallner) speaks in a Deep South dialect and shares a horrifying story about what he once did to a group of Hitler Youth. Eugene (Skylar Astin) is a translator, which comes in handy when he finds a journal. Kirk (Theo Rossi), and Butchie (Alan Ritchson), are, well, the remaining two soldiers.
This set-up is neat, if questionable. Separately, Nazis and supernatural forces are enough conflict to go around; consider two installments of a major movie franchise about an adventurous archaeologist as proof. Combining the two is a trickier proposition. The first sign of trouble comes with the central set piece, which is both an extensive shootout between the soldiers and their faceless enemies and also an extended scare sequence involving soldiers on both sides being tricked, haunted and lured into compromising positions by a quartet of angry spirits. It’s to Bress’ credit that the sequence doesn’t completely collapse under its obvious lunacy.
After the group arrives at the mansion to relieve a group of officers, the tired and indistinguishable scare tactics begin immediately. Bress stages and executes these with detached competence, but until Nazi soldiers intrude in the climactic battle, the filmmaker isn’t particularly skilled at hellraising. Spirits are brought to life with rudimentary visual effects and a lot of quick cutting to hide their apparent cheapness. The characters are standard military types, and the performances are just fine enough to service the material. That material, though, is thin soup, saying nothing useful about the spirits haunting the residence or the surrounding conflict that led everyone to this place. That might have something to do with the final 15 minutes, but in keeping with the spirit of gross misdirection, Bress never tries to build character or situation.
At the inevitable climax, Bress throws every concern, every suggestive element of the setting, and every character motivation out with the bathwater for a ludicrous twist that is a tonal and thematic nightmare. There are hints of this misdirection: killing targets was too easy, and Billy Zane’s early appearance as a Nazi colonel was too short to justify itself. Yet the answer to this riddle indicates not only the director’s grotesque overreach, but a rampant cruelty toward his audience and characters. There is a lot of smoke here and not much fire – only mirrors.
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