Macabre…ish Horror Review: Ghost Master
Ghost Master, 2019/ 1 hr 28 min
(aka Gôsuto Masûta)
In the middle of making a movie, the lead actor walks off the set but the assistant director, Kurosawa catches all the flack. He is tasked with keeping the film on track but he’s failing, no one respects him, least of all the director.
But Kurosawa has his own dream, he wants to direct horror and even has a script called Ghost Master. He idolizes Tobe Hooper and hopes to make a film like Lifeforce. And he hopes to cast Mana Watarase, an actor in this movie to play the leading lady in his horror film. But she thinks he’s a terrible director and she says she’d never be in his film.
Plus the one person he had any rapport with, he finds out it’s all a ruse, he makes fun of him behind his back. Kurosawa is devastated and runs from the room. After he trips and falls, his nose bleeds on his script and the picture he bleeds on moves.
Then he finds the lead actor, Yuya, outside hitting a wall leaving bloody hand prints all over it. He confesses to stressing over the movie and tackles Kurosawa to the ground and now his blood is on the script and the book sticks out a tongue and laps it up and the book changes.
The book then leaps up and attaches itself to the Yuya’s face. Then it falls off and changes form and dives down Yuya’s throat. He seems possessed but when Kurosawa runs to alert the crew, Yuya is somehow already upstairs. Looking totally normal and holding Kurosawa’s, now normal, looking script.
When they get back to filming, Yuya does a lot more than pin the girl to the wall, he pulverized her head. Everyone thinks it’s a rare bit of genius from Kurosawa until they realize it’s real. And when Yuya finally turns around, he looks like a monster and everyone runs for their life.
Yuya catches the director and bear hugs all of his organs into oblivion, the man’s eyes shoot across into someone else’s face. The crew tries to jump over a railing to escape but a force field makes it impossible to leave.
Some hardcore crew member wants to film Yuya and it turns out there’s something to that because he responds to the camera and they can use it to stop him from killing and maybe get the monster to kill itself.
Mr. Todoroki takes on the monster with his lucky sword, even after his head is punched out of existence, he keeps trying to fight. He does cut off Yuya’s arm which later sprouts a demon and then turns into the book.
After Mana Watarase slaps Kurosawa around and convinces him that it’s his story and so he is the only one that knows how it ends and can stop it. But there is no end yet, they have to make it and so they do. This is Kurosawa’s directorial debut and if he does well, they might survive, if not then they’ll definitely die.
This Japanese horror film was directed by Paul Young and the screenplay is by Ichirô Kusuno. This movie goes from very benign to really over the top and often wacky physical effects. It is also very bloody and gory.