If you're like me you're a big fan of the Gyllenhaals (and pine for more movies with both Jake and Maggie, preferably playing siblings a la Donnie Darko) and shrieked with delight, as well as fear, at Jake's amazingly creepy turn as the petty-thief-turned-TV-news-stringer Louis Bloom in last year's brilliant Nightcrawler. Arguably 2014's best mainstream film after Birdman, Nightcrawler did an unbelievable job introducing the world to the horrific possibilities of gathering lurid footage for local news outlets...or so the producers thought. That's not a knock on Nightcrawler's quality, just a note that it wasn't the first movie to look at L.A. news stringers in a less than flattering light. A much smaller film, The Ghouls, snuck out on video a decade earlier after modest festival circulation and never became well-known enough to be forgotten. I would've never seen it if not for a handy positive review by Fred Adelman over at his indispensable genre film review site Critical Condition. With only a few days left before Halloween I felt it a welcome obligation to get the reviews back up and running to spotlight a few horror flicks that needed more recognition, and The Ghouls is a sucker-punch way to get into the spirit. While Nightcrawler drew its viewers into its creeps gradually and got a lot of unsettling material with great restraint, The Ghouls leaps right for the jugular and then sells it to the 6 A.M. block for easy ratings.
Eric Hayes (Timothy Muskatell) scratches out a living filming grisly crimes and their aftermaths for sale to local news outlets, and less than two minutes into the movie is found filming a man stab his naked girlfriend to death while their baby cries in the corner. Almost everybody he knows despises him, including the producers he sells his tapes to and possibly even his girlfriend Sue (Tina Birchfield). One night while stumbling to his car after a good boozing he sees a woman being dragged into an alley, and he runs to her with his camera expecting a juicy mugging or rape. What he sees instead is a bunch of dirty, barely human beings eating her alive, and not only does he barely make it out unscathed but he had the misfortune of forgetting to put a tape into his camera. Desperate to get evidence of urban cannibals on film, he promises big results to one of his news clients and decides to follow any lead he can to find his perps. The only thing is, the only people willing to talk about them are scared to death and lead him into the sewers, and not even the news is ready for what he might find...
Shot on grainy digital video and drowning in unpalatable subject matter and visuals, The Ghouls is one of the bleakest and grimiest films I've ever seen about the dark side of media. Eric Hayes is about as anti as a hero gets, more than willing to let people get attacked and even killed for a chance at profitable footage and lashing out at people who criticize him for it. What's so fascinating is how the film makes you sympathize with him despite his obvious flaws, his curiosity and willingness to plunge into darkness to find out the truth about L.A.'s seediest underbelly making him compellingly human against a decidedly inhuman threat. Let's be clear here - this film could easily be pitched as Nightcrawlers meets C.H.U.D. and in no way is that a bad thing, as it manages to synthesize the better themes of both films and carve out its own identity in the process. You might be thinking that a 2003 movie shot on digital video, and exclusively at night, might be unpleasant to look at, but thankfully writer-director Chad Ferrin, has a fine eye for shot composition and remembered to bring some good lighting. A lot of movies shot on video can't help but look like the director secretly shot his friends goofing off using a hidden camera in his glasses, but Ferrin manages to shoot The Ghouls so professionally that it's easy to forget you're watching a medium that wouldn't start looking really good for years. Ferrin, a Troma graduate, managed to write a script that's both intelligent and engaging but also allows for the production to be as cheap and minimal as possible, as all its characters live and work in hovels and the actors probably wore their own clothes while shooting. What he saved on sets and costumes he made up for in good gore effects and a good casting director, as with a film this cheap everybody needs to be pitch perfect right away and there's not a whiffed performance in the house. Especially notable is Timothy Muskatell as Eric, an actor whose most mainstream role has been a supporting role in Deadgirl yet he brings a real intelligence and heart to a role that desperately needs its empathetic qualities proven rather than just shown. There's also an eerie-yet-minimal free-jazz-meets-tomandandy to heighten the caustic danger of the story, with most of the film letting the droning din of a nocturnal urban landscape immerse us in dread. And then there's that soul-crushing last line. I mean, damn.
With its graphic violence and depressing story, The Ghouls might look like a hard sell - don't let it be. The smart script, solid direction, excellent acting and good pacing all make The Ghouls way more enjoyable than you might be expecting, crafting a minor horror classic out of limited means and stark realism. Is it better than Nightcrawler? No, but what recent movie is? Is it better than C.H.U.D.I? Well, I don't know, but C.H.U.D. wasn't exactly perfect, either (but was still way better than C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud). You've got a little more time in your Halloween viewing block, don't you? Here, I'll sweeten the deal - its distributor threw it up on YouTube in full for free. How's that for grabbing your attention?
~PNK
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