Ghost Child - Reviewed

Director:

 Gilbert Chan

Writers:

 Gilbert Chan, Tan Fong Cheng.

Stars:

 Ming Bridges, Hanwei Chen, Cecilia Heng 

The film opens with a young girl who is holding a baby being chased in the middle of the night by an angry mob.A passing driver see what is happening and steps in to help.The mob is scared off then fast forward to a few years later.....

We see our main and very troubled character a reclusive loner who lives at home after her mother passes away.Then her father returns with his new girlfriend who the grandmother takes an immediate dislike to as she is half Indonesian. No.No matter what the son tries grumpy old granny is having non of it. They have returned to seek shares owed to them by his previous employer in the hopes of setting up a new life. Unfortunately for them the employer has no intention of selling his shares and his excuse is now that the company has expanded all he the father wants is his money, He tells his new lady the only way this will happen is when he is dead.

The young girl is part of the school swimming team and is regularly bullied by the other girls, things like taking her clothes when she is the shower etc. One day after a series of odd events she searches the internet to see how to contact a ghost as she has the suspicion that her mother maybe trying to contact her. As instructed in the video she lights 3 candles and at the stroke of midnight she says the ghost she wishes to contacts name in the mirror 3 times, The only thing that  to happens is that her grandma comes in and tells her she  to sleep as it's getting late! But the next day at school whilst she is taking an exam her pencil mysteriously rolls on its own, she grabs it and at that point it seems possessed,  it starts filling in all the answers for her then it later transpires that she has scored a good 98% on her test. This is not the only odd thing to happen,  when she next has a swimming race she comes first, much to the annoyance of the head girl she challenges her to another race and if she loses she has do do 5 lengths naked, she agrees but only on the premise that if she wins the head girl has apologise in front of everyone, the race takes place and on the final part it appears that something drags the head girl under the water, visibly shaken she says that it was just cramp and reluctantly apologies to the one she has been bullying.

At this point it appears that the weird stuff is not only happening to her but her grandmother is frequently woken in the night by all manner if sounds, this leads to some great scenes where in true Asian horror style we see a solo person wondering around a spooky house, you know the kind of thing I mean, mirrors, things moving under blankets etc..

So it seems that the father and his girlfriend are getting screwed over, the granny is losing her marbles and the young girl is constantly picked on, will it be the mother ghost who returns to help them all?well you'll just have to give it a look and find out!

It has to be said that it is a bit of a slow burn but the last 20 minutes are excellent, yes it can be said that it is your typical Asian horror but with some great performances and more than it's fair share of jump scares its definitely worth checking out,

7.5 / 10

Jonny T.