 Changing aesthetics with stalwart Italian genre directors from the 80s seems to be a theme in the new millennium. Argento’s last few films (Sleepless, The Card Player) have drawn some major criticisms from even his most devoted fans. Likewise, I feel that Lamberto Bava’s (Demons, Devilfish) newest opus, Ghost Son, will also put off some of his more fervent followers.
A sumptuous film, Ghost Son tells the story of Stacey (Laura Harring) and her lover Mark (John Hannah). Although Stacey’s vocation remains a mystery, she has decided to leave everything behind and shack up with Mark in his idyllic African home. In the short time she’s there, she begins to learn that the natives have very strong superstitions and beliefs, which come in handy when Mark is killed in a car accident. Remembering something an old lady told her, Stacey takes a branch of a tree from the death scene so she can bring Mark’s spirit home to be with her. Perhaps she wanted him back too badly, because once he starts appearing, there’s something just a little off about him. He violently takes her sexually and at one point, his ghost attempts to seduce her into committing suicide. He fails and Stacey finds out that shortly afterwards that she’s pregnant. Things only get weirder when she has the baby and it starts sexualizing Stacey in, frankly, some pretty perverse ways. Fondling her, practically chewing off her nipple and other crazy happenings lead Stacey to believe that the baby is possessed by Mark and that it also wants to kill her.
 Ghost Son is not a completely flawless film; although Bava’s artistic merit is stunning. When he delves into Stacey’s grief, he creates a moving portrait of love and loss. The first half of the movie mostly deals with Mark’s death and Harring pulls off the emotional feat with such an honest approach, embodying torture of loss with such depth, it’s almost impossible not to be moved by her. There are segments where day becomes night in almost an instance, which captured the sense of how minutes can bleed into hours when you’re grieving. And it is here that Bava creates an atmosphere of total reality while blurring it effortlessly into surrealism. For Ghost Son is most surreal. Once the baby is born, it takes a turn for odd, yet it holds on tight to Stacey’s loss. Ghost Son also resembles Bava’s best film Macabro in that respect. Both movies explore the loss of life in such dark and still real ways.
That said, this movie is quite uneven in parts, and some scenes ended up being more humorous than scary. There are loopholes inside loopholes and such stretches in convention that it may leave viewers maddened trying to figure out some of the perplexing scenes. It’s also absent of gore, a Bava trademark from his Demons films. Keep this theme of changing aesthetics in mind and you’ll appreciate that Ghost Son is not a watered down film by an aging filmmaker. It’s just the opposite; Bava comes into one of his most mature and moving works, probably drawing from his own life experiences. It’s a very personal film. It’s unique and yeah, it’s beautiful. |
