Overall this film is okay. Its defiantly not the best supernatural horror movie I've seen but it defiantly deserves a watch. The plot is not anything that hasn't been done before, Nick Cages plays a father of a boy that goes missing. After a year of searching and doing his own investigation he discovers that there is an supernatural force taking children. Him and his wife fight to discover what happen to their son and try to get back.As expected with this type of movie there are a few jump scares. They are a little hit and miss. Some got me, some were massively preemptive and you knew they were coming. Some of the "scare" scenes felt a little bit rushed, it would have been better if they had more time to build the suspense. I think that would have made this movie a little more spine tingling. The crying lady character is quite sinister, when she appears in a few of the jump scare scenes she looked pretty menacing. I cant say I really liked the vultures that randomly appear. I get they are meant to be a calling card/sign of the crying lady but they feel out of place. I particularly liked the scene when Cage finds the sea of missing children, that was quite chilling. The script was everything it needed to be, but again nothing special. It ticked all the right boxes for the type of film it is, it just felt like it was missing that extra bit of scare factor. Nick Cage does a good job, it almost feels like he could be at the start of getting back on track with this movie. Its not as great as the Nick Cage that was in Con Air or Gone in 60 seconds but it was defiantly a better performance that he has given in other films recently. The only thing I hate seeing is him running. He is not a runner. He looks awkward and uncomfortable and for some reason it irritates me. Sarah Callies plays the part of the grieving mother well. She supports Cages character nicely. I would have liked to see her be a little more involved in the story but she was good when she was on scene. Watch this film if you have an hour and half to spare and fancy watching a jump scare supernatural film. If you want to watch a great horror movie then this isn't for you, maybe watch something else.

Nicolas Cage does so many movies that it's the greatest shame is when he does a movie like this. And it's not that it's an entirely *awful* project to work on - it's a horror movie that doesn't rely on the requisite jump scares that so many mainstream movies that get released in theaters tend to have and has an inkling of a decent premise about a kid who gets taken on Halloween night and a year later it's discovered that it's part of a string of kids who are taken on the night - and yet it's also that it's not very good either. It doesn't give the opportunity for Cage to do something legitimately good (which he IS still capable of, see Green's JOE from 2014 for proof of that) nor is it a place for him to go full bat-s***-cage like Port of Call New Orleans. It's a watchable lump.It's from director Uli Edel so if you've seen Body of Evidence (where Madonna has sex with people to death and there's a court case about it), and the Baader Meinhoff Complex (which is actually a pretty good accounting of the terrorist group in the 70's), so he isn't exactly a hack... sort of. He's out to basically tell the story that he's been given. The trouble is there isn't a whole of story to give out, except that there are some requisite clichés, such as when the married couple of Cage and Sarah Wayne Callies call upon someone who can talk to 'spirits' or whatnot (Poltergeist and Insidious called...), or the simple fact that Cage is playing a literature professor who on cue is teaching Goethe to his students who give him rapturous applause at the end of his first lecture (and then later when he's all sad that his son is gone and teaching Irving there's just a collective shrug, it's almost like there is no class there). It's full of clichéd elements.I think it's simply a combination of Pay the Ghost being full of stuff from other movies like the cult in robes (I liked it better in Wicker Man, a Nic Cage bat-s*** movie I'd rather be watching) or that it's execution is just lazy (the CGI vultures that hover over buildings from time to time, but then when it has to be story-driven there's some shadowy figure in a window). The simpler fact is that it's not very scary, and the director seems to be trying to make it scarier through bursts of music and dark lighting that is unconvincing. And yet through all of this, a little of Cage kind of sort of trying is there... in parts. And the actress playing his wife from Walking Dead is okay (though she often has a look in her eyes of panic, which may be for the character but may be uh 'Hey, can someone get me out of here?'). But the general feeling by the end of this is 'ho-hum', and one can only hope Cage is done paying off his tax debts so he can do more things like Joe again.

Truth be told, then this 2015 movie starring Nicolas Cage can be summarized with one single word: mediocre.Well, let's just add a bit more of filling to the review anyway, shall we? First of all, I must honestly admit that I had no hopes for this movie, given it being a Nicolas Cage movie after all. I am not a fan of his or his one single expression; constipated. And truth to the tendency, then he doesn't really excel in "Pay the Ghost".The story did have potential, I will admit that much. It is about a vengeful spirit, or ghost if you will, that appear once a year at Halloween to snatch three living children from the world of the the living. But when the ghost takes Charlie (played by Jack Fulton), son of Mike (played by Nicolas Cage) and Kristen (played by Sarah Wayne Callies), a game of ethereal trailing and tracking is set afoot. Mike wants to find and return his son at all costs.Well, it had potential, but it was all drowned in a myriad of predictable situations and outcomes. As such, then director Uli Edel didn't impress much.The effects in the movie were good, and the design of the vengeful spirit was actually quite interesting.But the movie was just a shallow shell of a movie, honestly. It was too predictable to be wholly entertaining, and the few scares that were to be had in the movie was from some really cheap scare tactics; as in jump-out-at-your-face techniques go.And the final showdown between Mike and the spirit, which you saw coming a mile away was about as anti-climatic as it could be. A few measly moments of ethereal pommeling and then it was all over.The acting in "Pay the Ghost" was also mediocre. This was nowhere near being at the top of what Nicolas Cage is actually capable of doing, and Sarah Wayne Callies seemed to be like a drone caught out of the air.Don't get your hopes up for this one. And if you are looking for a scary movie that will have you wishing that you'd left the lights on, then "Pay the Ghost" is not the choice. I am rating it a very mediocre five out of ten stars.

In the era of mostly every film being ridiculous garbage, PTG was decent. I saw it for free but I wouldn't have felt ripped off if I paid $7 to see it in the theater. However, that's where it ends. I would be highly uninterested in DVD releases, Special Editions, Director Cuts, etc. During the last 15 mins I was kinda like "Huh? Really??". Kinda hokey - but again - decent.Some parts were a little moving for me because I have two daughters around Charlie's age and I was thinking "What if this happened to them?" (I mean the abduction part - not the part of being held hostage in another dimension by a ghost witch).Worth a watch if nothing else is available but when you wake up the next morning you will have probably already forgotten about it.RKS