New To Blu: Pay The Ghost

Coming in a week late is our review of Nicolas Cage's latest stinker, Pay The Ghost.

"Dad. I can see your old career.
You used to be so cool."

Evil walks among us? Yes, it does. In the form of this movie. Former a-list player Nicolas Cage continues his losing streak of low budget, direct to video flicks with Pay The Ghost. 

Somewhere along the way, Cage lost his will and his gusto for creative endeavors. The man with an Oscar for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas is now turning out bi-monthly bottom of the barrel garbage that continues to shrivel his once great career as a leading man. Due to personal demons and a massive tax debt, Cage is churning out the worst movies he's ever made. Sadly, other than The Frozen Ground, the last five years have been a viable dumping ground for the actor as he just can't escape the sins of his past with a constant slew of horrendous, underdeveloped screenplays.

Pay The Ghost is no different than everything else he's put out the past few years. The script is a sad sack of cliched supernatural parts thrown into a blender of melodramatic thriller elements with a typical, puppy eyed, underwhelming Sarah Wayne Callies to top it off. Much like her days on Prison Break and The Walking Dead, Callies is always set at one level of emotive ineptitude. The same dumbfounded look that's defined her career never leaves her face as the Callies/Cage team up shows us exactly what a lack of chemistry looks like. Pay The Ghost is a by the book experiment in simply not caring. The characters suck. The story is a rip off. And the effects? Man, I don't even want to go there. 

"Hey! Is it cool if we stand here
looking like dumb asses for a while?!"

It's hard to see how far these stars have fallen and it's even harder to watch Cage try to interject shades of his former self into a movie that's no more fun than staring at a brick wall for 90 minutes. Played as a serious ghost mystery, the film is a boring mess with some of the worst CGI ever committed to the screen. With an expected ending, terrible pacing, and only a few small jump scares, this "horror" film is just shy of an abysmal disaster. 

Pay The Ghost rips off numerous far greater genre features while meshing terrible performances all around into a modern mythology about ghosts and the other side. Borrowing heavily from The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Mama and Insidious, this amalgamation sets the bar extremely low with a short run time, no character development, and a frazzled Nicolas Cage running around looking like a complete dope. Of course the police think he's crazy. Of course his wife can't stand him. And of course you shouldn't watch this Uli Edel straight to video crap fest. This is one of the worst films of 2015 and probably the worst thing Cage has ever done. Steer clear. 

Score


-CG

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