GHOST CREW

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
GHOST CREW - 2022 USA Release: Feb. 17, 2023 Hex Studios Rating: N/A

GHOST CREW goes over the top to give us the impression that we are watching an old 1990s TV show. The Video tape look, the glitchy, play head scratching to show that this is an old tape that's been sitting in a box for a while, right down to the clunky 1998 iMac that sent Jobs into panic attack mode whenever Apple enthusiasts didn't "warm" to it, and among journalists, that was pretty much all of them.

So, are you firmly comfy in 1998 now? Good.

BUT - this is an alternate 1998 where people have land line phones that let them talk to one another like Hi-Speed Internet as if it was a 2013 bug-free Zoom or Skype conversation.

Are you un-comfy yet? Good.

So is Tom Hughes (Tom Staunton), the Independent Journalist and face of Ghost Crew. It's a low budget, practically bargain basement, TV show about investigating haunted places. Tom does his best to deliver drama, strike curiosity, suspense, and trepidation into his audience and does so with the help of his camera man, Michael (Michael Brewster: THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS).

Unfortunately Tom is just no good at it.

He over dramatizes, is over zealous, and over serious, which makes him the butt of jokes among young people who mock him as he tries to do his job. Tom is also a target of wrath by his producer Arnold (Alexander Zorn: ATTACK OF THE UNKNOWN), who wants results - a real ghost! - before he pulls the money plug on the whole operation.

Tom is desperate for something, anything, and is so far down the end of his rope that he seems ready to give up, and that's when a befuddled and lost young woman enters the picture.

Tom, struck by her forlorn state, forgets about the ghost stuff and just tries to help her. When cameraman Michael suggests getting her to a hospital, the young woman, Sandy (Megan Tremethick: THE LOCKDOWN HAUNTINGS, WEREWOLF CASTLE, DRAGON KNIGHT) becomes alarmed.

Not knowing what else to do, Tom takes them back to his Ghost Crew headquarters: Basically his home. Tom tries to impress Sandy with the gravitas of his meager television company "International headquarters!" to win her trust so he can get down to the business of finding out who she is and how to help her.

Sandy isn't sure who she is, where she came from, or where she can go for help. She woke up in a hospital and walked out. That's basically all she knows. Her fear at her situation isn't helped by Tom's increasing frustration with her seeming to have been born only today. Easily frightened by Tom's aggression, she remembers where her home is so Michael takes her there.

Tom can't let it go at that and goes to meet her and her family. Only there is no family, only a befuddled old woman at the address who lives alone.

Perplexed, Tom decides to try another route. Sandy mentioned that she left the hospital in the forest. Tom and Michael, who live in this town, know nothing of any "hospital in the forest", but go to look for it.

They nearly give up when they come across a decrepit "shit hole" of a large, spread out building. A passing local with a rifle tells them that it's the old psychiatric hospital, but it's been closed ever since the arson attack decades ago. Then the old man walks away without another word.

Tom just has to know more about this building and the more he investigates, the weirder everything, I mean Everything, gets. This hospital and the murder that took place there seems to be the town's best kept secret. How is it possible that everyone Tom talks to knows something about it, and how was it under his, the town's own Ghost Investigator's nose, this entire time?

The moment Tom finds out that a girl was brutally murdered here and one of the possible murderers later tried to burn the place down, Sandy is no longer a mystery to us. Yet she remains a mystery to Tom and Michael.

Pretty soon there's all manner of warning signs, people who are put off by Sandy and yet Tom, in his zeal to uncover a haunting, Just Doesn't Get It!

Soon after that, despite all the warnings and dead bodies, Tom is getting farther away from being a Ghost Investigator and a whole lot closer to solving a murder mystery - including the identity of the mystery murderer who may still be alive and not that keen on Tom poking around.

GHOST CREW is a Horror comedy suffused with Horror tropes but no scares. Unlike Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie Who Dunnit mysteries that leave the audience in the dark, GHOST CREW is more in tune with Richard Levinson and William Link mysteries like Columbo. From the start we know what the mystery is, the story is in seeing how the bumbling detective, or in this case, Tom the small town bumbling Ghost Investigator, solves it.

In addition to playing the lead, Tom Staunton also wrote this. And, in addition to playing the cameraman, Michael Brewster is also the movie's actual Cinematographer. Further, in addition to Megan Tremethick being an actor, she was also the Second Unit Director.

Micro-budget Director Lawrie Brewster (LORD OF TEARS, THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS, THE BLACK GLOVES, AUTOMATA, FOR WE ARE MANY, DRAGON KNIGHT), who is also the Producer, doesn't attempt to hide his effort behind cheap gore effects or bad actors attempting to impress us with T&A. His movies, while cheap, make the effort not to look cheap. There's a polish to the lighting, camera work, and sound.

That said, the never dull GHOST CREW took around 15 or 20 minutes of its 87 minute run time to find its footing and initially went to the well a few too many times with the SFX of static video tape glitches.

Also Regan Walker (DRAGON KNIGHT), the annoying kid who mocks Tom, was a punch-line that needed no call back, the fact that the actor appeared in two scenes after having run out of steam in the first one, and adding nothing to the second, robbed those moments of their humor.

There were other scenes like this, where the full power of a reveal is made, then the camera just stays on the person(s) as they can do nothing else but keep repeating their motions until Lawrie finally lets it go.

While largely shot cinema verite for the fictional Ghost Crew show that Tom and Michael are making, this is no found footage PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movie. It seems, in fact, to take its cue from DISTRICT 9, where it starts out as "news footage" and gradually becomes a motion picture narrative.

Many Horror fans adore Tim Burton movies, even though he's made only one Horror movie. Heavily influenced by a childhood of fond memories of Hammer and Amicus Horror flicks, Tim has spent his career creating worlds of Horror tropes more fun than funny. Audiences are attracted to his stories but just as attracted to his characters.

I find this same spirit running throughout GHOST CREW and, as it turns out, director Brewster and Tom Staunton are also heavy Hammer and ardent Amicus fans.

I've watched GHOST CREW twice now and liked it even more the second time.

The story is of a perverse murderer and the horrific nature of those crimes that strangled a town into silence. So much so that there's a rift between those capable people who know and live with the terrible burden, and those incompetent bumblers, outsiders to the place they grew up in, who will explore their own doom for a lark, simply because they can't see they are walking into the jaws of death. Staunton and Brewster's clueless characters are lovable, fun, and enjoyable. This is one of those flawed gems in the rough, which is why I give GHOST CREW -

Three Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2023 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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