Ghost Squad (2018)

 

Stuck living with her abusive father, Rika finds herself struggling to keep from committing suicide as she continually has visions of strange ghosts around her.

Eventually Rika comes to understand that the ghosts want her to help them get revenge on their killers, who are still free living on Earth. Rika is initially reluctant, but when she finds out her only friend is secretly also a ghost seeking revenge, Rika decide to help the ghost women hone their supernatural powers, kill their murderers, and finally cross over into the afterlife.

Of course, this might be easier said than done, and it definitely carries risks.  Rika may have a trio of powerful ghosts on her side, but she herself is still entirely mortal ...

Ghost Squad comes from Japanese film-maker Noboru Iguchi, who previously brought the world the lunatic carnage of The Machine Girl, RoboGeisha and Dead Sushi, all of which I enjoyed, though I watched the first two too long ago for them to have a review on here.  This new film is very much in the same sort of style, but I have to admit I don't think it measures up to the others.  Let's talk about why.

The first issue is a simple matter of budget.  Iguchi's resources for making Ghost Squad were clearly a lot more constrained than in some of the earlier films.  This manifests in a couple of ways.  For one, his trademark over-the-top gore effects are much more clumsy and limited than in something like RoboGeisha. For another, the locations used are pretty limited and basic; it feels like he was limited to whatever places he was able to get on the cheap, rather than those that might best match the script.

The second and much bigger issue is the script, which has a number of weaknesses.

For one, I felt that this film was a bit more grim and mean-spirited than his earlier offerings.  While the earlier films were hugely violent and gory, and the villains sadistic monsters, the form of their violence was so extreme and absurd that it was less distressing than the more prosaic and 'realistic' violence here.  Or at least, the non-ghostly violence; once the ghostly revenge starts it does get goofier.

The script is also a more than a bit gratuitously sexualised in somewhat puerile ways.  The female ghosts get power by kissing the female human character, and one of them takes an "air shower" which involves stripping down to her underwear and jumping around for no obvious reason, while the camera ogles her bra and panties.

Finally, pacing is an issue. The story is thin and there are quite a lot of "slow motion walking" sequences and other tricks to pad the runtime.  This is particularly odd because they're so unnecessary: the film runs 100 minutes and would actually be much better off running 15 to 20 minutes shorter than that.

So are there any plusses to the film?  Well, climactic ghost rampage is sufficiently ludicrous as to be enjoyable.  On the other hand, it also has the issue that it goes on a bit long, and I don't think is enough to justify seeking out this movie when you could re-watch one of Iguchi's earlier, better offerings instead.