The Ghouls (2003)

Crappy film

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

From the very cool and quite freaky DVD cover and the intriguing ideas and themes, The Ghouls really did have potential to be good. Unfortunately it was just a very messy movie where the low budget very badly hurt it.The best thing about The Ghoul is the performance of Timothy Muskatell in the lead role. It is not a perfect or great performance by all means, the character is somewhat of a despicable one and Muskatell does fail to bring any empathy or humanity to him and there are a couple of times where he does play hard-nosed a bit too low-key. The good news about the performance though is that it is a commanding and brooding performance with a good deal of assurance and intensity, managing to bring some watchability to the movie. Joseph Pilato also brings some gravitas but isn't used enough to shine properly. The rest of the acting is very amateurish, being so low-key that there doesn't seem to be any acting going on, and the stock and unsubtly one –dimensional characterisation and incredibly stilted dialogue disadvantage them further.What stuck out as particularly bad with The Ghouls was the production values, or lack of, it was made on a very low-budget and it shows through painfully. The sets are basically parking lots and dimly lit sparse rooms, and the continuous shaky camera work not only is distracting in how dizzy it makes one feel, it makes it hard to work out what's going on. A lot of it feels like very random footage hurriedly edited together with little care or coherence. The very poorly recorded (very muddied) music is jarring in style and really distracts from the mood, even overwhelming the dialogue at times. The story had some interesting themes and ideas but unfortunately little is done with them, parts are mentioned and then skipped over or things are under-explained which makes it not an easy movie to follow sometimes, and it drags badly constantly with too long being spent on less-important or irrelevant scenes.The Ghouls doesn't succeed as a fun or scary movie either, it's too tedious and too bleak to be fun (taking the seediness to extremes with gratuitous nudity and even cheaper-looking gore, and the harrowing images and horror elements are so in your face, at times too random in placement and done with the subtlety of a sledgehammer that it becomes too much after a while) and the dull pacing and low-budget severely hurt the atmosphere. The titular creatures similarly make no impression, they are not used anywhere near enough and are poorly made-up, looking more goofy than menacing, also exuding no personality let down a sense of threat.All in all, despite the DVD cover/case and the ideas it had, The Ghouls is a ghoulishly bad movie with Muskatell's performance being the only thing that it has going for it. Some might like it, but this did nothing for me. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Yea so apparently the DVD case has misled viewers into expecting yet another living dead infected bloodbath filled with gore as we have seen many times on land sea and air and has left the viewers unsatisfied with what they saw. I saw this on crackle....for free...I don't remember exactly what the description was but I didn't let that effect my opinion. The movie is obviously very low budget however that seems to add something to finished product which is not another simple zombie attack but an insight on the lower class types and their lifestyles in the city......with some flesh eating ghouls thrown in. I was entertained.

The Ghouls is a shot on video horror film about a man who freelances for local news stations. He drives around at night and films whatever terrible things he can find, then sells the footage. We see that this life is taking its toll on him, but we don't learn until later just how far he has gone.I was lucky to discover this movie without knowing much about it. I can understand how some of the reviewers who saw the DVD box at the store would feel misled. This movie was done on a very small budget, and the horror element (in this case, zombie-like creatures) does not play as big a role as some may have hoped. It is more about this man's torment. He is barely making a living, he witnesses the worst things that go on, he can't keep a relationship, and he has zero respect from his peers or employers. Even the paparazzi don't have this bad an image.When the cameraman happens to stumble on a woman being attacked by the sewer dwelling creatures, he sees it as his big chance to capture an exclusive. Supposedly, footage of one of the attacks will lead to a big payday and a better life. He tries to get his ex-girlfriend involved, but we find out she wants nothing to do with him: she discovered a tape he made of two children trapped in a fire. He continued filming but did nothing to help them.Eventually, while trying to find the creature again, his camera is stolen by a mentally challenged man who uses it to record a murder. The man gets his camera back and the footage left by the special needs killer makes him a success.For me, the movie was successful at creating an atmosphere. The scenes of L.A. at night felt more realistic to me because it was shot digitally. The soundtrack, which was full of ambient noise and some sort of freaked-out jazz, helped the mood along. There isn't much gore because that isn't the point. It's more about what a bottom-dweller this guy has become. I would compare it to the Tony Curtis movie The Sweet Smell of Success. It might not be as well made, but for me, it was just as effective at transporting me into the life of a man who makes his living off of other people's misery.

I first caught The Ghouls on the UK horror channel. Knowing nothing about the film prior to this screening, I found myself in the happy position of discovering for myself a truly brilliant and original horror film that had me engrossed from the opening sequence of a stringer's true crime footage to the powerful, downbeat ending. Chad Ferrin constantly confounds viewer expectations, teasing out of the bleakness of his character's lives a surprising amount of sympathy for the monsters, human and otherwise, who populate his tale. In a noteworthy cast particular praise must go to Timothy Muskatell, who reminds me more and more of an exploitation movie De Niro every time I see him at work. I was impressed enough by The Ghouls to seek out more of Chad Ferrin's work. Unspeakable also comes highly recommended. The Ghouls is one of the very best horror films of the new millennium, with more to say about the human condition than anything currently emerging from the Hollywood mill. An important film by an important film-maker. Chad Ferrin is one to watch.