They’re crawling back out of their holes…and houses…and temples like it’s 2002 – 2005 all over again. So are they as scary as they used to be? I take a look at Temple, Ghost House, and The Hatred.
TEMPLE (2017)
There are a couple of intriguing and even creepy moments at the end of this film—one in particular that I loved—but a whole lot of nothing happens leading up to it. Plus, even after the horror happens, there’s absolutely no clarification as to what any of it all meant.
An American couple comes to Japan and has a young male tour guide, who immediately makes the boyfriend jealous.
While seeing the sights, the girlfriend sees a drawing of a temple in a raggedy old book at a shop and decides she wants to go there. Despite that being the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and despite several warnings to stay away (some of them clearly supernatural), they head for the temple.
All of that…takes FOREVER.
Eventually, the characters are split up on the site and experience totally different horrors.
All I’ll say is that this creature that chases one guy through the woods is nightmarish.
Everything else is either pretty standard stuff (demon kids reminiscent of that kid from The Grudge) or impossible to see because it’s sooooooo dark (just a flashlight in caves).
And then come the attempts to bring it all together…attempts that are totally disjointed.
THE HATRED (2017)
It’s another ghost girl. But first we get a 20-minute period piece backstory with Wishmaster Andrew Divoff as a crazy religious extremist Nazi misogynistic father. Imagine that. Trump’s America in the 1940s.
Present day, the American Werewolf from London is a college professor and married to Tina from Elm Street for their 90-second cameo. They leave their big house so his foursome of female students can spend the weekend there…with his creepy young daughter?
One of the college girls makes the mistake of going into a room the little girl warns her never to enter. Big mistake, because this leads to…an hour of shadows, noises, thunder, lightning, flickering lights, and the girls researching the history of the house.
Finally the ghost girl comes out full force.
And she’s got as much hatred as all the other ghost girls that have come before her, but none of the haunting talents.
GHOST HOUSE (2017)
The director of The Curse of El Charro takes us to Thailand for another vengeful Asian ghost girl flick…only this time she’s a terrifying old witch.
Her appearance in the opening scene kicks ass, then we meet our main couple, consisting of Scout Taylor-Compton and her man, on vacation in Thailand with a tour guide, who teaches them about local customs…like a small model that has superstitious significance as a “ghost house.”
In the meantime, they go off on their own with some other tourists to a ghost house graveyard and end up pissing off the old witch, who then makes Scout her target.
While Scout is relentlessly terrorized by the old witch, her man sets out to figure out how to rid her of the curse. There are a whole lot of witch doctors and a whole lot of visits by the scary old witch lady, plus a dash of demonic possession/exorcism.
Sure it’s derivative, but if you’re missing the heyday of Asian horror, this is a pretty good throwback and my favorite of this trio.
