This war will not end. With every mile my body and spirit break. Every jolt makes brittle my mind. Each step pulls me further from home until I am the shell of the man that kissed my mother goodbye a forever ago.
And I tense endlessly. Not knowing which will arrive first, the bullet that takes my life or my final chance at redemption.
-D. Werner, 18 Years Old. WWII Private 1st Class
Ghosts of War is a British Supernatural/Psychological Horror Film by Eric Hess.
The year is 1944. The place is Nazi-Occupied France. In this time, a platoon of American soldiers composed of Chris (Brenton Thwaites), Tappert (Kyle Gallner), Eugene (Skylar Astin), Butchie (Alan Ritchson), and Kirk (Theo Rossi) have been assigned to watch over a chateau that was taken back from the Nazis and await further instructions. The previous platoon seemed rather eager to leave, but the soldiers don't think that much of it.
Seems the last platoon's attitude was warranted, though. Not long after hunkering down in the mansion, the troops find some strange things happening in there, and begin seeing some pretty scary stuff. It soon becomes clear to them that the mansion is haunted by the ghosts of the family who lived there, the Helwigs, and they are not happy that their home is being intruded upon.
The movie was released on July 17th, 2020.
Ghosts Of War contains examples of:
- The '40s: The movie is stated to be set in 1944. Except it isn't. It's actually more 20 Minutes into the Future inside a computer simulation.
- All Just a Dream: The events of the movie are revealed in the end to be a computer simulation. The soldiers are actually fighting against ISIS, and the whole WWII thing was to help their minds recover from an explosion they suffered.
- An Arm and a Leg: Butchie lost both his arms at least from smothering that grenade explosion. Heck, pretty much everyone in the platoon lost a limb in that suicide bomber explosion in the real world. One lost his whole jaw.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Eugene tells a story about how he found Tappert playing Cat's Cradle among a bunch of Hitler Youth corpses. He'd managed to get very far without help, which leads Eugene to ask this.Eugene: How did he manage to get to step five, in a room full of corpses?
- Back from the Dead: Turns out the soldiers were apparently tricked into resurrecting the Helwigs, who proceed to attack them.
- Bait-and-Switch: Near the start, Chris spots a man smoking near where he and his platoon are sleeping. He asks the man what he wants, and the man discards his smoke and pulls out a gun. Chris brings out his own gun... and some time later, the man is gone. Of course, since it's all a computer simulation, and that man may be a representation of the ISIS leader who had the Helwigs killed.
- Boom, Headshot!: A wounded Nazi soldier gets shot in the head by one of the American soldiers.
- Bystander Syndrome: Turns out, this is why the Helwigs are haunting the soldiers in the simulation. The soldiers were supposed to be protecting the Helwig family from ISIS in the real world in exchange for giving them medical supplies. But when an ISIS group showed up, the soldiers hid in the wall of the house, and just watched them torture the family to death. Sure, one of them trained his gun on them, but he didn't shoot.
- Creepy Changing Painting: Eugene finds a photo of the chateau's old family in the basement. He brings a light up to it to get a better look, but the light goes out. When he uses a flashlight on it, everyone in the photo is gone.
- Crowbar Combatant: Kirk uses a crowbar to beat to death one of the Nazis who survives the group's ambush on the way to the chateau.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Chris decides to go back into the simulation to save his squadmates from the ghosts of the Helwig family in the simulation. Unfortunately, the machine also suppresses his memory, and the next scene implies things are just going to repeat all over again.
- Electromagnetic Ghosts: When the Helwigs rise from their graves, all of the lights in the chateau go out.
- Eye Scream: Butchie seems to have lost an eye in the grenade explosion, as evident by the fact that the damaged half of his face has a layer of flesh where his eye should be. There aren't any eyelids either, just a surface of injured flesh.
- Fingore: When Eugene and Tappert are trying to move a cupboard in the attic, its door slams shut on Eugene's fingers. When he pulls them out, all of Eugene's fingers are bent in odd directions.
- Genre Shift: Starts as a supernatural horror set in WWII, but late in the film, it switches to science fiction when it's revealed the main characters are in a computer simulation.
- Handguns: It being a war movie, of course people have these.
- Haunted Technology: The vengeful spirits of the Helwigs are inside the simulation with the soldiers, seeking revenge on them for not coming to their aid as they were killed by ISIS soldiers.
- Headgear Headstone: After Butchie dies, he's buried outside the chateau, with his helmet on a stick acting as the grave marker.
- Heroic Sacrifice: During an assault by Nazi soldiers on the chateau, a grenade is thrown into the house. Butchie throws himself on top of the grenade to smother the explosion. He survives, but all of his limbs were blown off.
- Jumping on a Grenade: During an assault by Nazi soldiers on the chateau, a grenade is thrown into the house. Butchie throws himself on top of the grenade to smother the explosion. He survives, but all of his limbs are blown off.
- Jumpscare: Plenty, courtesy of the ghosts of the Helwigs.
- Karma Houdini: ISIS never paid for any atrocities they had inflicted upon the Helwigs.
- Man on Fire: The Nazis in the simulation, and ISIS in the real world killed Mr. Helwig by tying him to a chair, dousing him in alcohol, and setting him on fire.
- Nightmare Sequence: At least one of the soldiers suffers one while in the chateau.
- No-Sell: After being revived, the Helwigs are able to completely tank gunfire. It does cause them to de-rez, though.
- The Reveal: The cause of the haunting is that the soldiers were supposed to protect the Helwigs in the real world from ISIS, but just stood by and watched them get tortured to death. A grieving survivor tried to kill them all via suicide bombing, and with her last breath, cursed them to be haunted by their transgressions in the form of angry ghosts in the computer simulation.
- Robbing the Dead: One of the soldiers like cutting golden teeth out of the mouths of dead Nazis. When they find a group of fleeing civilians, the soldiers give a mother a bunch of them to help her.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After a couple nights in the chateau being accosted by supernatural horrors, most of the platoon are ready to leave, not even caring if they get court-martialed for desertion.
- Secret Diary: Eugene finds a journal in the basement that belonged to a Nazi soldier named D. Werner that explains what happened to the family who lived in this house.
- Victor Steals Insignia: The squad ambushes a German-captured jeep and kills the occupants. Tappert not only loots everything of value off the bodies (including their gold teeth),but also cuts the S.S.insignia off their uniforms; seemingly as a souvenir.
- War Crime Subverts Heroism: On the way to the chateau, the squad executes the Nazis who survived their ambush. This includes beating one of them to death with a crowbar, and Butchie forcing one of them to face him in a boxing match, before Chris shoots him in the head because they don't have time to waste.
