Ghost Game

There are bad horror movies, and then there’s Ghost Game — a film so bafflingly misguided, it feels like it was written by someone who skimmed a BuzzFeed list called “Spooky Stuff 101” and then said, “Yeah, that'll do.” Released in 2024 and on track to become a sleep aid for horror fans everywhere for years to come, this film squanders a halfway-decent premise with the grace of a haunted turnip rolling downhill.

The setup? A couple of influencers take part in the world’s dumbest internet challenge, sneaking into strangers’ homes and trying to convince them their houses are haunted — all while recording it for views. And their next stop? A mansion with a tragic, spooky past. Original? Not even a little. But fine, horror loves a haunted house. The real crime here is what follows: a tangled mess of half-baked subplots, including a shadowy figure running the "Ghost Game" network, a traumatized family, and an ancient curse (maybe?). None of these threads go anywhere interesting — they just sort of hang there like cobwebs nobody bothered to clean up.

The cast mostly sleepwalks through the script like they’re unsure if this is a horror movie or a high school drama club experiment. Zaen Haidar, as the boyfriend, delivers lines like he's trying to remember if he left the oven on. The supporting cast ranges from forgettable to straight-up confused. But amid the chaos, Kia Dorsey actually shows up to work. She plays Laura like she’s in a completely different, much better movie — one with actual stakes and character development. Dorsey gives us tension, conflict, and actual expressions with her face, which is more than can be said for everyone else wandering around like Sims waiting for their next command.

But let’s not let the script off the hook. Oh no. The dialogue is an all-you-can-eat buffet of nonsense. Lines like “The darkness feeds the fame and the fame feeds the fear” make you wonder if the screenwriter was just typing random emo lyrics into Final Draft while...