Film Review

Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

A notorious criminal must break an evil curse in order to rescue an abducted girl who has mysteriously disappeared.

written by Jack Thomas

Prisoners of the Ghostland is a bore. “A bore” is the best phrase to describe it because describing it as “junk” would seem like a compliment to its marketing team. But it’s not junk, it’s a film that aspires to be junk… and fails. It wants to be Shogun Assassin (1980) or Seven Blows of the Dragon (1972), but it’s barely above Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). That it currently has a 75% “Fresh” score (based on 77 reviews!) on Rotten Tomatoes is truly astonishing. Are critics really impressed by lazy, contemptuous nonsense like this?

The “plot” doesn’t make much sense, but there’s a basic thread one can follow, if only because you’ve seen the tropes before. Hero (Nicolas Cage) is an incarcerated bank robber who’s offered his freedom by The Governor (Bill Moseley), but only if he retrieves one of three escaped brides from his harem, Bernice (Sofia Boutella). The catch is that Hero’s fitted with bombs attached to his…