Yeah, this film didn’t really do it for me. Of late I’ve been on the prowl for a quality horror or suspense movie. Something with a compelling story, and while I didn’t initially believe that Ghost of Monday would live up to that desire, I left the door open to be surprised. As it turns out, I could have left that door closed with the lock latched. The Ghost of Monday is a slow-burning tale that I never really connected with. For one, the premise is a bit anti-climatic and has been addressed with box office films such as The Invitation and Ready Or Not, which I found to be the best. In this instance, a television director (Mark Huberman, Vikings Vahalla) travels to a supposed haunted hotel for the purpose of making a television pilot. Eventually, he and his crew find themselves wrapped up in a supernatural conspiracy that could have life or death consequences for them. Did you catch my use of the word “eventually”? Stay tuned, I’ll explain that in a bit. The biggest intended draw for the film was probably the inclusion of Julian Sands of Warlock fame, but his role is secondary in relation to the overall film. All in all, I’m still on the lookout for a quality horror or suspense film.
Now to address my use of “eventually.” That word was chosen carefully to emphasize how long it took for the film to get to interesting bits, i.e. the action. It took over forty minutes for this to occur. Now I can appreciate a slow burn and the need to build suspense, but that only works when your characters are interesting enough to carry the story until we can get to the meat and potatoes. This is not the case here. We initially follow Huberman’s character as he is basically attempting to put the pieces of his life back together. The long and short of it is that both his professional and personal lives have taken hits in recent years. A majority of the forty minutes are used to attempt to address his efforts to fix his situation in both areas. The problem is, Huberman’s character is not exactly loveable. He is quickly annoyed and short-tempered with the other members of the crew. Now a portion of that can be attributed to his desperation, and personal issues apparently have to do with a tragedy that resulted in the rift between him and his significant other. Even so, it still isn’t enough to balance the scales in my opinion. I will say towards the end he starts to have some redeeming moments, but again it feels too little too late.
Back to the “eventually” commentary. As the film takes so long for things to get going, it caused me to build up a significant measure of anticipation and expectation for things to reach their crescendo. What I got felt anticlimactic in comparison to what I anticipated. To its credit, the first kill scene had some intrigue as it occurred in full view of a witness, who remained oblivious to the happenings that were happening in their surroundings. This was done well in my opinion, but nearly every other killing scene following this was a bit of a letdown.
In summation, this wasn’t the experience that I was hoping for. It isn’t without some moments of intrigue, but based on the amount of build it took to get to these moments, it doesn’t balance out. You need a great deal of patience when you watch this movie, which unfortunately was not something I had in the quantity that it required.
This may well be the final film for Julian Sands. He has been missing for over a month in the mountains of Southern California. The conditions have often been to rough for trained rescuers and I’m afraid there is little hope that he will be found alive.
