“Oh my ******* God.”
The above is the best line from the movie “The Ghosts of Monday”, and it pretty well sums up this 78 minutes of nonsense.
Actually filmed on the island of Cyprus, which has it’s own sordid past, this poorly conceived, written, directed, acted, and edited – did I mention the ‘rap’ closing music? – tale of ghostly happenings in a long-closed hotel does nothing to burnish the island’s image. To be fair, though, Cyprus is divided between Greek and the Turkish factions, and the Turks could be forgiven for wanting to drive their neighbors into the sea after this Greek-produced international embarrassment.
The forgettable cast is led by Julian Sands (“The Survivalist”), a veteran actor capable of much better than the alcoholic, lecherous, hammy role of “Bruce” he is given here. One can only place the blame at the feet of director/writer Francesco Cinquemani (“The Poison Rose”). Yet, I’ve seen “The Poison Rose” and it is a much better film, so Cinquemani may simply have been cursed during this outing.
The film begins with the arrival of the TV director Eric (Mark Huberman – “Vikings: Valhalla”) and an actress, Sofia (Marianna Rosset – “Portrait of God”), who are there to film a TV pilot that will star Bruce as a European ghost hunter. They have a miniscule crew and the hotel they will shoot and live at is a thoroughly modern building – although one movie poster shows an appropriately creepy old hotel. This structure, built on the foundation of an earlier hotel, has been empty for 30 years, and is feared by the residents of the town – residents who we never see even when the principal actors are walking through town. I guess they couldn’t afford extras. Or maybe all these missing people are the real ghosts of Monday. Anyway, the hotel is feared because 100 guests died violently all in one night – a Monday night, those three decades before.
As they roam the empty hotel (not even renovating workmen are present), some very mildly spooky incidents occur and tension builds between the main characters. The owners of the hotel, a wealthy couple, become increasingly menacing and Bruce desperately wants to have a drink with anyone – especially the young women.
There’s a bunch of random spooky stuff, and then the killings begin. And these are horrific. If you get off on brutal, bloody knife killings, you’ll sit through the preceding tedium to get here. If on the other hand, they disgust you, then the whole affair is one big waste of time. From this point on, all attempts to string bits together in some logical fashion is discarded.
The bible book of Ecclesiastes states “…there is nothing new under the sun.” And Andre’ Gide wrote, “Everything that needs to be said has been said before.” In the case of this film, one might paraphrase and say, “Every bad part has been filmed better before in innumerable B pictures.”
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