An Italian production, and that’s a good thing. If this were a strictly American movie, it wouldn’t have as much flavor to it. Transplanting the action helps to make the story feel slightly more original than it is.
This isn’t a bad movie. For a ghost story, it’s actually pretty good. But The problem is that it doesn’t feel original for a long time. This made me wonder about the tropes that ghost stories fall into. I felt like this was a pretty standard story. Kid is haunted by a spooky ghost, who wants something. (The Golden Arm) The mother gets involved and investigates person who died. Everything comes together.
Substantial spoilers.
At the end, roughly the last ten minutes or so, we get a more complete version of what happened. The person who died after having her teeth ripped out was actually an evil person; she killed and ate several children in the neighborhood. After her husband finds out, he rips her teeth out, and leaves her in a closet to die. The ghost is still desperately searching for her teeth. Once we learn that the lady was evil, there’s a great reversal. Suddenly, we realize that the main characters have been pulling in the wrong direction.
This is a very pleasing ending, especially since it doesn’t have the resolution that The Ring does. The Ring just makes it clear that the main characters are done with the curse, but that they’re passing it on. In this case, they have let this evil force free, and there’s really no way to re-contain her. It’s a bleak ending. I’m glad they went with it. Too often, horror movies, and ghost stories in particular, rely on a sense of paranormal logic, something that makes intrinsic sense, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Watching this made me realize that it’s really hard to tell a good ghost story. I should examine the cliches of ghost stories and see if there’s something a little more original to tell.
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