In another instance of what could have been something of a great film, it falls flat in its execution with dull pacing and boring characterization where the only thing that had me jumping out of my seat were a few flashes of a tarantula coming onto the screen. Ghostwritten is a forgettable retread into what doesn’t even seem like an interesting portrait of the character.

The movie centers around a novelist (Jay Duplass) looking for some inspiration and trying to write a new story when his career seems to be at a stand-still, having only written one hit novel. That’s all I feel like revealing now as the majority of the film also looks to be at a stand-still and the dull pacing is enough to yank your hair right out of your head. This film seems more like a conglomeration of other better and superior horror films that came before it. This is another one of those movies where I am still surprised that it got funding.

On a positive note, the performances of the film are pretty good. That’ something most people could agree upon. Moreover, the production design is effectively creepy. It does give an atmosphere of bizarre and gothic macabre that should satisfy some fans of that genre, which does help benefit the film in some small way.

Watching part of the film is almost like watching an old 1960s horror movie. It does give off an aesthetic of vintage horror while still, obviously, using modern technology with its sharp lighting and camera angles. It can be said that the film is certainly a sleek and stylish look at some modern horror. Again, however, this would be so much better if the pacing of it wasn’t so damn slow. It’s almost like watching paint dry. You keep watching and watching it but it never seems to go anywhere. Whenever you are writing for a project, it’s important that every bit of dialogue and every scene is used to move the story forward to keep the audience engaged. The movie feels like we’re moving towards nothing and when we finally get there, it never feels like we’ve been satisfied.

Maybe the film might have been better if it worked primarily as a short film for a grad school program but stretching this out to a feature’s length and making it very boring does the material, cast and crew no favors. Write a project with a sense of urgency and the rest of the audience will feel that sense of urgency in the script.

To be fair, the film has some excellent cinematography and should be proud of that fact but the rest of the movie does nothing to complement everything surrounding it. It adds nothing new to the genre of horror movies and falls short in almost every other front in the making of this production. If people lined up a list of horror movies with Ghostwritten in the mix, it would be very hard to pick this film out of a line up and describe what really makes this movie unique.

4 out of 10