Pay the Ghost

Name: Pay the Ghost
Director: Uli Edel
Released: 2015

Uli Edel

2015

Synopsis

One year after his young son disappeared during a Halloween carnival, Mike Cole is haunted by eerie images and terrifying messages he can’t explain. Together with his estranged wife, he will stop at nothing to unravel the mystery and find their son—and, in doing so, he unearths a legend that refuses to remain buried in the past.

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Recommendations

42
The A.V. Club
The movie’s B-movie flimsiness is pervasive, and paired with an overall lack of B-movie flair, though director Uli Edel makes some game yarn-spinning attempts.
38
New York Post
In Pay the Ghost, Nicolas Cage investigates a supernatural abduction, but has no solution for the maggot-eaten zombie that is his undead career.
30
Village Voice
The script doesn't know the difference between being something scary and pointing at something scary. It's less a film than a series of imitative gestures, a bunch of horror signifiers pointing to nothing.
30
Los Angeles Times
Tidbits that would make the film interesting have been squandered. Instead, we get the standard-issue haunted-house fodder. The ghosts manifest in so many different ways that it seems like the movie is grasping for straws.
30
The New York Times
Dan Kay’s filament-thin story, accessorized with flapping vultures and disturbing graffiti, relies entirely on Mr. Cage’s desperate-dad energy.
30
The Hollywood Reporter
Whatever you have to pay, it's too much.
25
The Playlist
The highest compliment that can be made of the movie is that it is harmless: never laughably bad, never painful, just pure mediocrity, from start to finish.
25
RogerEbert.com
Pay the Ghost, out in very limited release today, is a new low for Nicolas Cage. Just when you thought he couldn’t get any more apathetic about a role, he pops up in this lazy, boring retread of “Insidious” that even his most diehard fans should ignore.