I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have enjoyed a Nicolas Cage film. Like Gollum forgetting what food tastes like or my dad forgetting what civility is all about … it’s just been so long. And it’s possible I’m giving this one a better grade than it deserves simply because, well, it was much better than the last five Nicolas Cage films I’ve seen. Truth told, so was Snow Dogs.
Mike (Cage) and Kristen (Sarah Wayne Callies) are a single-child power couple in Manhattan. Mike observes the tired cliché – dad who is too busy with job to pay attention to child. Actually, in Cage’s case, I wonder if the cliché is: guy who is too old for this role. Con Air was eighteen years ago and he’s still got a child the same age. The suspension of disbelief for Nic Cage films these days is not that there are otherworldly specters lurking around every corner, but that he has a chance of seducing anybody who currently identifies herself as “female.”
Anyway, the kid is at that awkward age where evil phantoms and vultures show up all the time. Boy, been there. Am I right? At a Halloween carnival, he’s taunted by a figure who looks deader than most. As Charlie (Jack Fulton) as Dad go for ice cream, the kid pivots to his dad with, “can we pay the ghost?” And then *poof* no kid. Personally, I think the next moment in Pay the Ghost is worth the effort just to see panicky FYNC lumber past brownstones in a cowboy get-up, but then, my tastes are different … from everybody.
FF a year and Mike and Kristen have broken up. Nothing ruins a couple quite like tragedy befalling offspring. However, Charlie starts showing up places. Just before Halloween, both Mike and Kristen are getting visions of Charlie interspliced with evil. Huh. Well, that’s a bit of a mixed message. And there are other parents with supernatural visits. Nobody throws a Halloween party quite like NYC.
I’m actually a little miffed here. Pay the Ghost ain’t The Exorcist or nothin’, but I see at least 25 new horror films a year and finding one
with a decent scare is a real challenge. While those “found footage” films don’t scare toddlers, this one did have a few genuine frights in it. But who gets the major release? This or Paranormal VI: the Ghost Is All Right? Well, FYNC, ye reap what ye sew.
I found Pay the Ghost several cuts above your average ham-fisted Cage match. I’m not quite sure what to take from that feeling; the imdb clearly says others DID NOT feel like I did and even if I’m right, it’s hardly Cage’s Robert Downey-like return to land of living actors. Perhaps it was just nice to see Nicolas Cage film, get to the final shot and actually wonder if there’s anything worth seeing in the end credits.
♪Old Man, your career has been down
I said, Old Man, you have become a clown
I said, Old Man, you have no more renown
There’s a reason to be unhappy
Old Man, here is one thing I know
I said Old Man, you are short on your dough
You’ll take any … project acting, although
Every single one you choose sucks
It’s great to poke fun at F.Y.N.C.
Self-destructive F.Y.N.C.
He can’t make a good reel
He takes all roles at will
He’s got to know this one thing
Forever, he’ll be F.Y.N.C.
There’s no returning F.Y.N.C.
Doesn’t matter the bag
Your life is one giant gag
I’d feel sorry for you, but … you know♫
Not Rated, 94 Minutes
D: Uli Edel
W: Dan Kay (if nothing else, I have to give this film credit economy of letters used in the names of writer and director)
Genre: The dead – no sense of boundaries
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: How badly do you want to see Nicolas Cage in a decent film?
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: FYNC!
♪ Parody inspired by “Y.M.C.A.”
