It’s my birthday, so I can watch what I want to and nobody can stop me. Up tonight is a random movie I found perusing the new adds to services. Hadn’t planned on it specifically, but when I read the title, saw it wasn’t an Asylum picture, and saw some of the trailer in the background I was hooked. Not like - oh yeah, this is going to be the best movie of the year kind of hooked, but “I’m gonna watch this because I’m probably going to have fun and it won’t overstay it’s welcome” kind of fun. So here we are, covered in ecto-goo and wondering how many friends i could convince to make a movie if I ever wanted to - tonight we punch ghosts with the Ghost Punchers.

A hotdog delivery guy’s whole life is about to change this one fateful night. While delivering a hotdog order to a warehouse, some freaky hot lady slides around and disappears, but he can’t tap his inner chicken and escape the situation because the door behind him has locked. Watch out hotdog man, that woman is a ghost! He tries to fend her off by throwing anything laying around at her, but the garlic is the only thing that seems to help - and when he’s on his last piece he grabs on to it and does his best video game impression, punching that ghost clean out of existence! Well, turns out this entire situation was a setup by a super secret organization whose name is the movie title. Also turns out they thought he was his super cool CIA brother, but now they are stuck with him. Join the adventures of a hotdog loser on his quest to punch ghosts and become a somebody while under the watchful eye of his own partner nightmare (no, really, she’s a literal nightmare). What could go wrong?

The entirety of this review could probably sound like me contradicting myself constantly. Might as well start like normal though - the acting is okay. Like, I know there some folks that are going to be like “it’s not good” - but at the same time nothing about this movie tells me they were intentionally going for super serious heart string puncher jobs from the actors. It feels more like a group of friends getting together and wanting to make something that’s as much fun as they are having - it’s not bad, but sometimes they go for that intentionally bad over-blown like read that somehow still fits the movie even though it feels stupid. It’s a bit like those “dumb comedy” movies that I sometimes have a hard time wanting to watch - like Super Troopers or Superbad - where you certainly wouldn’t call out anyone as someone that should be winning awards but you also aren’t necessarily hating the movie you are watching. It’s a bit of an extreme example, considering both of the comparison movies are movies I’d rather be quoting with people then actively watching, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind to compare the acting to.

Characters are there, oddly enough. I mean, it’s not Shakespeare or anything, but we do have a main character who kind of has a heroes journey development through the thing. You have some bonds forming - although it’s debatable how forced that might feel - and they still find the majority of time to not be very serious. Yeah, outside of the main two characters, it’s a lot looser with any sort of development - if any even exists - but I wasn’t really even expecting that going in here, so yay for low expectations and over delivering. There’s a bit of a satire feel in some of them, and at times i really felt like there was a bunch of intentional or not design choices - like outfits that can remind a person of anime or certain game characters.

Less un-obvious would be stuff like when they walk by the building most would recognize from a different group of folks who bust ghosts - (although it’s just a normal building here). The overall feel of the movie also is pretty on the nose - it doesn’t feel like a million dollar movie, but also feels it knows it and works with what it has got. Sometimes, maybe not as great a thing - for example, I still am not entirely sure if the big boss appears as a hologram for the trainee’s or if shes just on the ceiling and it’s made of monitors because the eye lines of the actors during that scene can be a bit all over the place. The action scenes aren’t horrible, although generally quick little short sections that aren’t more than two to three punches (normally at things that aren’t technically there like floating ghost energy or whatnot) so I don’t think it’s always appropriate to call some of them actual action scenes. It counteracts that with a bunch of character parts - be it trying to throw in some corny jokes or give it’s characters a little something more for characters - so I would expect more talking and goofing about then actual ghost punching.

Keeping in line with the budget, there isn’t a whole lot of super elaborate things going on here. There is one okay-ish explosion in the movie, and most of the ghost effects look pretty decent although also still not too crazy. Mostly some filters or CG work from how it looks on screen - but it’s not the worst I’ve seen, and honestly I expected way worse before I watched the movie. It’s painfully above Asylum movies, especially now that the Asylum has gotten it’s hands on AI to further drop their costs to make mockbusters. Now, I will say that it’s handle well enough that if you saw it on something like Youtube you’d feel like people were doing a pretty good job - but if it was something from a powerhouse like WETA or ILM you’d probably be disappointed. For a movie that really feels like a bunch of pals making a movie about busting ghosts with your fists and just having a fun time, it even has an ample amount of people getting hit with some slime cannons. Yeah, I can tell you are just hosing them from offscreen movie - but sometimes that’s the charm, and I’m sure the movie knew that when they did it.

Audio balance is fine. You hear the actors, and they can deliver the occasional good line. Humor is gonna be hit or miss, and I found myself laughing more in a “that’s dumb” way then I did actual good jokes - but some of them are in there as well. Bunch of slapstick, a few jokes playing around with puns, and there’s a few raunchy-ish jokes in there (in the same kind of way that “death by snu snu” is raunchy but not really in an explicit way somehow). Soundtrack is also quite up my alley, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m listening to some Futurecop! (the band responsible for the soundtrack) as I’m writing this. For the thinking types, I do feel the movie is somewhat conscious about not being to deep at points - like a quick pass of about how we don’t want to crack the can open of having empathy towards ghosts - but considering it does have main character development there is some stuff in there about friendship and getting past your fears and the power of love in a way I suppose. You all should know I’m not the one to come to for the deep thought stuff after 14 plus years though.

It may not be the best ghost busting movie, but it’s not the worst either. It had surprisingly more quality then I thought. It had about as much fun as I thought - which was plenty enough. It had a soundtrack that matched it’s synth future-retro title logo (which I liked), and overall it was put together decent. It has some downs to go with it’s ups (sometimes it can get a bit talk-heavy, especially when explaining things), but overall I didn’t feel the movie overstayed it’s welcome and think I found an enjoyable enough movie to end my night out with.

@IMDB

Ghost Punchers (2025)