Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

tmccull52 The true horror inspired by this film will be what you'll want to do to yourself after you wasted your time watching it. You'll want to claw your eyes out, scoop out your brains with a rusty trowel, and pierce your ear drums with roofing nails.This movie isn't just bad, it's stupefyingly bad. The acting is atrocious, and the direction is even worse. Barry Corbin has a small, uncredited role in this film, and after having watched it, I am convinced that he had a clause in his contract stating that his name would not overtly be linked to or associated with this putrid waste of celluloid. If I could have given this movie anything less than one star, I would have.To be honest, the main reason that I watched the movie was because Catherine Mary Stewart was in it. I loved her in "Night of the Comet", and "Weekend at Bernie's". After having seen her in those films, I was hugely disappointed by her performance in "Ghoul". She took cloying and maudlin to new depths.None of the children in this movie could act in even the most remote definition of the word. Take an episode of R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps"... ANY episode.. and it would seem like the remake of "Evil Dead" or "The Conjuring" compared to "Ghoul".I haven't yet read the novel that inspired this movie, but I am given to understand that it is a decent read. I don't know how closely the movie adaptation paralleled the book, but some of the elements of the movie were beyond any semblance of believability, particularly the closing scene between the "ghoul" and one of the child protagonists of the movie.The story behind the "ghoul" is that the evil, drunken, abusive father of one of the three children central to the plot was the foreman over a mining crew. One of the men under his supervision asks for the day off of work because his wife doesn't feel well. Greedy for a promised bonus if some assignment is finished early, the foreman declines the miner's request, which leads to tragic consequences. The miner goes home after work, and discovers that his wife killed their twin sons, and then herself. Apparently, driven mad by his grief, the miner becomes a recluse and goes to inhabit the now abandoned mine and tunnels.The evil, drunken, abusive father/former foreman is so wracked by guilt for what he has done to the miner's family that he helps the miner trap his victims. Here we have another clichéd horror movie plot... kill the males, kidnap the females. Gee, never seen that before.In another review, Brielyn Sexeny is mentioned. Yes, she is attractive, but her big scene in the movie is when she goes berserk and gets into a mixed martial arts brawl with the clothes on her backyard clothesline.By the way, Brielyn Sexeny's character kills more people in the movie than the ghoul does.If you haven't seen this movie... DON'T. It really is that bad.

T-Horror This movie is aimed at a tame audience, but has taken from a much less tame story. So I'm essentially writing this review so that people who feel closure is important and do not have the time to actually read the novel. I suggest you go to the Ghoul novel wikipedia page and read the plot. I promise closure...and also a little sadness.But in the whole of it I found the movie to be very watchable, while a lot of questions were left open, and the ending was abrupt, the movie throughout was an entertaining experienceI was happy with the acting, I may be alone but I believe the characters (Especially Timmy and Barry) to be placed perfectly in what it was obviously asked of them to play

blacklatexfan Oversimplified, this film is a bad a mash up of the classic abuse of Peter Lorre's classic "M" (1933) and Rob Reiner's "Stand by Me" (featuring Wil Wheaton).The film focuses on the small town exploration of three young boys who live in a small town where the monsters are real. Here monsters are the socially repugnant adults who use the children and weaker adults for their own devices.The presentation of the issue of child abuse is heavy handed and obvious from the beginning where we are introduced the characters all of whom fit the obvious of the young hero films.Unlike the old teenager training films from the 1950s and 1960s which showed the dangers of the alcohol, illegal drugs and dropping out of school that showed the targeted children in a sympathetic light, none of these boys are appreciable in this story.Nolan Gould plays a foul mouthed egotistical leader of a band of three boys who are all the subject of abuse. He suffers from the abuse of disinterest by his well meaning though emotionally shallow parents. His father is obviously at odds with his own overly kind father. His overweight friend is the abuse of a drunken sexually frustrated mother who uses her underage son as her own personal sex toy. He retreats into overeating as a means of self protection until he finds a friend in Gould's aggressive leadership. The third boy is physically abused by the stereotypical drunk father who at the end event has his right eye bear shut by said drunk father. But he is almost as evil as his father for he almost shoots his father in the back several times with only fear of jail preventing him from pulling the trigger. He continues to allows his father to abuse his mother rather than tell the police as the entire town people knows knows about the drunk gravedigger.You will not be able to appreciate the police who are incompetent in finding several missing children. Even in this 1980s setting they fail to get the town people to amass searches for these missing children.I will not spoil the ending about the killer -- the so called "Ghoul" -- and its reason for doing what it does. But I will say this this is NOT a horror film. And if you are expecting a horror film you are going to be HORRIBLY disappointed.This film is a social commentary and awareness film that presents its message "Protect the children. Do not let the children be abused" in a manner than will make most watchers of this horror film turn the channel and ignore the message for the simple fact this movie does NOT take itself seriously as a social commentary movie. It devolves into tricking the horror and gore consumers into waiting for events that the movie is actively trying to avoid -- namely the murder as in all horror and monster films.Targeting an audience who are expecting horror/thriller when that is specifically the topic you are trying to deny is unforgivable. At least this film should have presented characters you could identify with for their plight. At most all you will hope for is these children will get adopted by people who are more mentally aware than these idiotic stereotypical adults who are far too obvious and annoying.

jacobtlong I've been a Brian Keene fan for a while and Ghoul is one of my favorite tales of horror. When I heard there would be a movie I was pretty excited, but I didn't want to get involved in a lot of the hype. As someone who happens to be a Stephen King fan, I know all about bad movie adaptations. Well, Ghoul isn't exactly a bad movie adaptation. It's just not a true adaptation. The movie does manage to convey the spirit of the book to a certain degree when it is not being hindered by the typical downfalls of every TV movie (the shaky acting, the questionable production, the lack of violence, etc.), but the scares and thrills just aren't there. The ultimate difference between the book and the movie is that the book is a terrifying and visceral experience. The movie starts out with possibilities of being the same, but skews off in a different direction and becomes something akin to a Lifetime movie. The ghoul that was so frightening in the book almost becomes a Scooby Doo villain in the movie. The book is terrifying and disturbing. The movie is only slightly disturbing and not very terrifying. The atmosphere of the movie is just too tame and too sterile to warrant terror. The disturbing factor is the relationship between Doug and his mother and Barry and his father, but the book handles it much better. So what the movie had going for it is nothing that hasn't already been done better before. But, judging the movie for what it is, I'd still say it was entertaining up to a point. A decent and watchable film, but I just didn't find it to be a very memorable movie. If you want a great growing-up adventure movie about kids then Stand By Me does a much better job. If you want a great disturbing horror movie about kids then there is always Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. Ghoul just doesn't have that same zing.