Ghost Month (2007)

Written and directed by Danny Draven
Starring
- Marina Resa
- On Yun To
- Akiko Shima
- Rick Irvin
- Jerod Edington
Produced by Danny Draven and Jojo Draven

Up until now, director Danny Draven’s output has been a string of low-budget horror films, all of which you can find reviewed on this here site: HorrorVision (2001), Hell Asylum (2002), Cryptz (2002), Deathbed (2002), and Dark Walker (2003). All but the last were produced on the cheap at the behest of Full Moon Pictures or whatever corporate umbrella Charlie Band was using that particular month; the last one was produced independently, but for even less for even less money than any of the previous, and ended up being distributed by Full Moon anyway. I’ve always been impressed by what Draven has been able to do with the budgetary and corporate strictures placed upon him, and wondered more than once what he could do if cut loose to make the movie he wants to make.

Ghost Month may not exactly be that movie — its independent production guaranteed that money would continue to be an issue — but it is truly Draven’s movie: Written and directed by him, produced by him and his wife Jojo (who is also Draven’s go-to composer). For the time being, at least, this is the only specimen we have on which to try my hypothesis: That working outside the unambitious world of crank-em-out low-budget horror, Draven could turn out something that would really knock the viewers’ socks off.

“Poe? No, I’ve never read him. Why?”

Which means that calling Ghost Month something like “a decidedly good effort” is a weaselly way of admitting that my socks stayed on. It’s very likely his best movie, though not so head-and-shoulders above his corporate output as I would have liked to see. I guess that just means that there’s room left to grow, right?

The movie does a good job of setting up one of the most important conditions for a successful ghost story: isolation. City girl Alyssa (Marina Resa) is just coming off a relationship and lifestyle turned sour, so she takes a housekeeping job waaay out of town (nestled in the colorful, sunbaked Southwestern hills); and because Mr. Ex-Abusive won’t stop calling her, she tosses her cell phone out the taxi window on the way out.

Alyssa’s employers are Miss Mu (On Yun To) and her almost completely silent aunt (Akiko Shima), and their house is a huge and well-appointed place, a mile from the nearest town. It’s not readily apparent why two tidy women need a full-time housekeeper, especially since neither has a job or any other pressing engagements to be seen, but they’re happy to have her, and she’s happy to be there and enjoy the silence.

“Wait — was it my turn to bring the marshmallows?”

Of course, being Chinese, they have some rules and customs that take some getting used to for Alyssa . Miss Wu asks that Alyssa not have visitors, and not make use their phone without permission. And also, don’t disturb the ghosts.

The “ghost month” of the title is the seventh month (coincidentally the time frame of the story), which is like the Chinese version of Halloween — the old, ominous, Irish Halloween. During the month, the unquiet spirits of the wrongfully deceased enter the land of the living, and the Wus engage nghtly in rituals designed to placate the spirits for the month: Burning incense and spirit money on the patio, chanting, and various feng shui practices. It’s a little “out there” for Alyssa, but she’s ready to live and let live (or die, as thy case may be)… until she starts having short visions. Visions of a crawling, bald man, and of a rotten-faced Chinese girl. She passes out several times, each time finding herself in unfinished brick utility room in the basement. She hears voices calling her name. She finds unexplained blood on her hands. This is not the recuperative R&R she was looking for.

And you just know the cat’s gonna get blamed.

And it soon becomes clear that it’s not just her. Miss Wu is almost bipolar in her moods, especially if the topic of conversation involves Mei Ling, their former housekeeper whose possessions Alyssa discovers. Or if the topic involves Blake (Rick Irvin), the horse trainer on the adjoining tract of land. And as Ghost Month progresses, Alyssa starts to wonder if her sanity is at issue…

Now, before I start a string of what will surely seem to be petty complaints, let me first lay down some blanket praises: The movie looks great. (Though it’s also a compliment to Draven that the 35mm footage here doesn’t look orders of magnitude better than the digital video on which he shot his earlier features, because he and his cinematographers in those earlier features did their best to guarantee good images.) Draven’s going for an old-school subtle spookiness here, and leaves out most of the shock angles and jump cuts that characterize the “hot” horror movies these days.

And also, the urge to put out a horror movie that relies on nuance and atmosphere instead of caffeinated torture or winking pop-cultural irony is a commendable one. In many ways, the production of Ghost Month after a string of gorier monster/slasher flicks reminds me of John Carpenter directing the old-fashioned ghost yarn The Fog (1980) after having practically invented the American slasher movie with Halloween (1978). After all, shock is easy. But dread? That’s hard.

“I spy with my little — Oh. Whoops.”

My main complaints, as usual, are niggling little arbitrary story points — not the broad outlines, but the details that form the ligatures from scene to scene. First and foremost is Alyssa’s seeming lack of interest in her own “affliction” by ghosts. Yes, she gets freaked when she passes out and sees things, but by the next scene she’s back to her housekeeping duties. In fact, that’s a persistent pattern throughout the movie: A scene of ominous weirdness, followed by business as usual.

Of course, that could be blamed on a storytelling flaw which isn’t unique to Ghost Month; it’s one of the main hurdles in telling a slow-building ghost story, one with building dread instead of chase scenes: How can you keep tension building without characters who freak out and take drastic measures too early?

Unfortunately, the “solution” all too often is to have characters act in arbitrary ways in order to serve plot mechanics. Some examples here:

- Miss Wu doesn’t explain the “rules” about offending ghosts to Alyssa (don’t whistle, don’t turn around when they call your name, don’t disturb the piles of ashes left around the house) until Alyssa’s had plenty of time to break every one.

- Alyssa keeps doing things that don’t strike ME as building one’s employer’s trust in you. Like sneaking phone calls to her best friend Nicole (Kierstin Cunnington); the rule was “no phone calls without permission,” but does she even once actually ask for permission?

“We wants it, Precious!”

- Miss Wu would rather that Alyssa not know about former maid Mei Ling — so why does she leave a box of Mei Ling’s possessions on the shelf in what is now Alyssa’s room?

The other bad habit is endemic to the mystery genre, and really, that’s what this kind of ghost story is. There are plenty of red herrings around to keep both Alyssa and the audience from figuring things out too far in advance, but the unspoken contract on red herrings is that you have to explain them in the end in such a way that they seem a reasonable part of the story and not simply a blatant attempt to misdirect the audience. I defy anyone to get to the closing credits and not demand to know what it was that Blake was burying behind his property in the dead of night.

All of which probably makes it sound like I hated the movie. Far from it; I thought it a very worthwhile ghost story. It’s more ambitious and sincere than anything Draven’s ever done before, and because of that, flaws that would be taken in stride in more exploitative fare, or spackled over with camp value, are more visible. But it makes me excited to see what Draven’s got up his sleeve next, because Draven is dependably a better filmmaker with every movie he finishes.