Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Pay The Ghost

Top positive review

Good Ghost Movie

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2022

Made us jump several times! :-D I also appreciated that the characters aren't boneheaded like in so many of this genre where they do illogical things that no normal person would do like run through the halls in their house in the dark without hitting a light switch or everyone in the family is seeing something but no one says anything about it. It also isn't gory. All in all it was a tasteful, simple, spooky Halloween ghost movie. It also isn't too long- just 1.5hr. If you have reasonable expectations you'll enjoy this.

5 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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D. W. Balcom

Huge Yawn

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020

Mildly entertaining, takes cues from MANY other/older films.
Transparent plot, unmoving acting, blerg.

I thought "Hey, it's got 4 stars it must be decent?"

Meh, there was one part where I jumped a little bit but that was only because I was reaching for a drink and accidentally spilled it, come to think about it, it had nothing to do with the movie.

11 people found this helpful

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From the United States

D. W. Balcom

Huge Yawn

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020

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11 people found this helpful

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T. Santo

I am being generous with two stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

I gave it two stars only because I did watch the whole boring thing. But some warnings:
Cage's expression never changes; scrunched up open-mouth face the entire movie.
Wife stereo-typed character who blames the husband for losing the child.
Every camera trick that one expects in a horror film. Everything always happens at night.
Borrowed scenes straight from Ghostbusters, the Exorcist and dozens of other horror films.
Horrible deaths of some minor characters for no reason other than to attempt to have some horror to the plot.
Script writers are allowed to make up rules. The ghost has the ability to kidnap children for centuries on Halloween and take them "to the other side". But before the first year is up by midnight of the following Halloween, the child can be recovered, otherwise lost forever. Nice rule to make sure that the son is recovered.
For those who want to take in this film, just this: there is nothing new here. You have seen it all before.

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Dr. Austin

Slow and dumb

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2021

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Found myself skipping most of it. Plot was not interesting and was very slow.

One person found this helpful

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ILuvFtMyers

Boring

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2021

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I watched about 1/2 of the movie...and then gave up. I found it boring and just decided I was wasting my time waiting for the "good part" to happen.

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Gino M.

Wasted opportunity

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2021

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After watching this movie, I honestly feel like I just paid the ghost with two hours of my life on earth. The plot development almost grinds a halt about half way through, then immediately jumps the shark. The same scary tropes are used over and over again to the point of them becoming comical. Worth a viewing if you like horror movie parodies.

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John

Don't waste your time, pretty standard and boring.

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2020

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It was pretty boring. At the end you knew that there was going to be a ghost abducting the children, not very original.

2 people found this helpful

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JA M-V

More evil appearances please...next time

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2021

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The main antagonist should have made more appearances throughout the film instead of just at the end of the movie.

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D. H.

A sleepy Cage pays the bills with this goofy, minor horror film

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Another round of Nicolas Cage-led nonsense. He plays a recently tenured university lecturer who goes to a local carnival with his son on Halloween night. "Dad, can we pay the ghost?" the nervous child mysteriously says, and then he vanishes without a trace. The police can find neither a clue nor a lead, and the Cage character is still grieving and searching for the child he lost a year later. It is then he begins to suspect a supernatural mystery at play. This detail sets Pay the Ghost apart from many of the actor's other recent low-budget genre vehicles: he has searched for an absent, harmed, or stolen child several times (including in a film titled...Stolen), but here the abductor is a ghost in an Insidious/Sinister vein. A few of the jump scares are nicely executed, albeit highly clichéd, and I always enjoy when a film tries to engage with the atmosphere and iconography of October 31st as celebrated in the United States, but this picture is otherwise lazily assembled. Supporting characters and subplots go nowhere (see: any scene featuring a disbelieving detective played by Saw-franchise veteran Lyriq Bent.) The imagery tends toward the absurd, including a giant computer-generated bird of prey shown circling above the city. Cage is firmly in his sleepy, ambivalent mode for most of the running time, though it is fun to see him give a spirited and wild-eyed reading of "The Erl-King" by Goethe early on. The film even undermines a well-earned intentional laugh when a woman participating in a recreation of a Celtic ritual relents upon Cage-brand intense questioning and admits she is just a nerdy schoolteacher from Queens...but then proceeds to drop an expository bomb of arcane cultural and historical information.

2 people found this helpful

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