Ghosts of War: The Horror of a Bad Ending

Ghosts of War directed by Eric Bress starts off like a typical horror movie. It takes place In France during WW2, where the main characters find themselves in an abandoned mansion they’re meant to secure until a relief team arrives. As you would expect from any horror movie, we find out the place is haunted. 

The plot is basic enough and fairly well-executed, blending horror and war to decent effect. The scares aren’t that bad and the setting is a perfect mix of creepy and fancy. I have no problem with the first seventy minutes of the ninety-four minute movie.

The real problem lies in the ending. While I don’t love this movie, I do recommend you watch it for yourself before reading on so you can get a taste of tonal whiplash like I did. Spoilers ahead!

If you are ready, let’s talk about it. The movie drops subtle hints towards the twist ending, slowly building it up until it finally happens. The twist reveals that they were actually in the future; they were in a simulation built to help people recover from traumatic experiences at war.

It just turns out that the simulation itself was haunted and the ghosts were messing with them inside of it. This alone isn’t that awful, a weak ending for sure but not the worst. The problem is that it keeps going.

The movie then shifts to a subpar sepia-tone war movie as you get a flashback to the story of who was haunting them and why. This pulls you completely out of the horror and leaves the viewer confused. It does try to have some fun with drawing parallels between the event and what happened in the simulation and it would have been cool if done correctly, but it wasn’t.

This ending ultimately makes the movie more confusing and convoluted than it needed to be. The first viewing is complete whiplash from the movie up until then. It completely destroyed the tone and suspense it built up in the first half. 

I respect movies for trying new things and I gave it a chance but it simply didn’t work here. While boring, the ending would have benefited from a regular non-twist ending 4/10