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Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Ghost Team' (2016)

Exactly What You Think Would Happen...

By Reed AlexanderPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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I'll be blunt. This movie was wholly predictable. But, in this case that's okay. You shouldn't be expecting any twists in this lovable little horror comedy. The movie was disappointingly not as violent as I was expecting. It wore the badge "Unrated" on Netflix, but there are two types of unrated films. Films so shocking, the producers knew they couldn't get them past the ratings people. And films were they ran out of money and could pay for the ratings people. Unfortunately, this was the latter. The "Unrated" badge here is just a clever way to make the movie more enticing. I'd put it at about PG-13 with a little too much swearing to keep that rating.

The acting was actually pretty good for a silly little movie like this. It boasts a pretty impressive list of names such as John Heder, Justin Long, Melanie Diaz, and probably my favorite Amy Sedaris. Quite a fucking cast they had. The characters were all lovable as fuck. This really smacked more of a sitcom than a horror comedy. They could realistically use this as a pilot for a series, though I'm not sure how far you could go with the concept. It'd likely dry up after the first season.

I digress, It was funny. They had this sense of general awkwardness in every situation for every character. It was cringe worthy at times, but not so much that it was unwatchable. They had everything from a guy who would rather believe aliens abducted his wife than to admit she left him standing at the alter. They had a mall cop who is the quintessential stereotype of a guy who flunked out of police academy. They had a fake medium who ended up on the team because she had no idea what she was signing up for and didn't want to blow her cover (my favorite, by the way). The characters were just well designed for this kind of comedy.

Everything else can kind of be glossed over. The plot is so simple it could have been written by a four-year-old. Almost like someone just pitched the idea of a spoof ghost hunt movie and the rest wrote itself. They did a solid job of giving the feel of shaky camera, but never actually used it which was nice. All the gags were pretty fun.

Yeah, I can recommend this movie. I can't says it's a must see, as I'm only comfortable with that for horror heads. As a comedy? I don't know. I don't think anyone would regret watching this.

SPOILERS!!!

Now, you know these poor bastards aren't going to find real ghosts on this hunt. The way they set up the characters and the plot, you can clearly tell the writer and directer firmly grounded this movie in reality. Aliens aren't visiting, ghost aren't real, all psychics are con artists. So with the general vibe of the movie, you can guess pretty quickly, it's the Scooby-Doo effect. Here's why that's okay. This movie made a point to set itself up for the Scooby-Doo effect. If you're honestly expecting real ghosts by the end of the movie, you're not really paying attention.

Now, I did kinda wish they'd have done something at the end. Like a slow pan in on one of the cameras or something where the video is playing and no-one is paying any attention, then suddenly a ghost glides across the screen. You really just wanted these guys to get a win. But the movie does already give them a win, just not ghost footage.

So these morons stumbled onto a meth lab hidden in the old farmhouse they're ghost hunting at. At first, the meth makers are trying to just scare them off and at one point it almost works. Unfortunately, the dumb bastards don't get the hint and this leads to one of the most ridiculous confrontations since dildo-chucks from a "deathgasm." Now, this isn't as good as "deathgasm," but it's still damn funny. This is right before a scene that's something right out of Plats V. Zombies. Except it's ghost hunters versus tweakers.

All in all, this is a damn fun movie. It's not horror comedy really, I'm not sure if it even belongs on my horror review, but I'm damn glad I watched it.

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About the Creator

Reed Alexander

I'm a horror author and foulmouthed critic of all things horror. New reviews posted every Monday.

@ReedsHorror on TikTok, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, and Mastodon.

Check out my books on Godless: https://godless.com/products/reed-alexander

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