A lot of attention has apparently been drawn to THE GHOULS thanks to its decent showings at horror festivals; truly the reason that I picked up a copy from blockbuster. Being an indie film maker myself I love watching other work to see what's going on out there, and I'm truly a sucker for "zombie" movies. Kudos to Ferrin on getting this distributed (truly a near-impossible feat) but after watching it, I kind of wonder why.
The story itself had a promising opening, an abnormal hero with an (hopefully) abnormal profession. It created a picture of a believable/real man in Los Angeles who stumbles across something extraordinary. The acting, albeit very flat, was not horrible...but truly needed to be a lot stronger to save the plot...
Now the problem, it seems to me at least, would be that the plot proceeded in a fairly straight-forward...dare I say tiresome/old manner. There were few surprises (if any) and I found myself not paying attention to the story or the characters and more towards the technical follies of the film:
1) SOUND- THE GHOULS should prove to everyone why you need to actually pay attention to sound...I can hope that it was just the copy I rented, but in all honesty after being to most of the festivals around here I'm thinking it was just that bad... 2) CONTINUITY- I loved watching our hero's car window go up and down between shots. 3) SHADOWPLAY- This would be a great THE GHOULS drinking game: "Drink every time you see a crew-members shadow!" 4) SHOT CHOICE- Hey guess what? You can actually tell when you're shooting through a windshield and when you're not...might want to deal with that one next time...And I think Mr. F may need to take a look at the purpose of an establishing shot in a good old film text book before we get another 10 seconds of traveling car...before the car is in the shot.
THE GHOULS did have a few bright spots: The makeup/gore was quite good (particularly near the end), the dialog had a few bright spots and some of the actors genuinely seemed to belong there.
In conclusion...if you've ever wanted to make a movie rent this one and it shows you what you could do with DV....or watch 28 Days Later (shot on the XL1 series of cameras) to see what digital can do with a horror film
The story itself had a promising opening, an abnormal hero with an (hopefully) abnormal profession. It created a picture of a believable/real man in Los Angeles who stumbles across something extraordinary. The acting, albeit very flat, was not horrible...but truly needed to be a lot stronger to save the plot...
Now the problem, it seems to me at least, would be that the plot proceeded in a fairly straight-forward...dare I say tiresome/old manner. There were few surprises (if any) and I found myself not paying attention to the story or the characters and more towards the technical follies of the film:
1) SOUND- THE GHOULS should prove to everyone why you need to actually pay attention to sound...I can hope that it was just the copy I rented, but in all honesty after being to most of the festivals around here I'm thinking it was just that bad... 2) CONTINUITY- I loved watching our hero's car window go up and down between shots. 3) SHADOWPLAY- This would be a great THE GHOULS drinking game: "Drink every time you see a crew-members shadow!" 4) SHOT CHOICE- Hey guess what? You can actually tell when you're shooting through a windshield and when you're not...might want to deal with that one next time...And I think Mr. F may need to take a look at the purpose of an establishing shot in a good old film text book before we get another 10 seconds of traveling car...before the car is in the shot.
THE GHOULS did have a few bright spots: The makeup/gore was quite good (particularly near the end), the dialog had a few bright spots and some of the actors genuinely seemed to belong there.
In conclusion...if you've ever wanted to make a movie rent this one and it shows you what you could do with DV....or watch 28 Days Later (shot on the XL1 series of cameras) to see what digital can do with a horror film