‘The Ghosts of Monday’ is a horror thriller that follows a documentary crew preparing to film a docu-series in Cyprus, in and around the infamous hotel Gula – the scene of a freak accident that took place on New Year Eve 1990, where all the guests had been poisoned and died.
The film starts with Eric, the director, and his girlfriend Sofia arriving on the island. On their way to the resort, they are filled in on the mysterious and cryptic history of the area, forewarning viewers of what is to come. At the hotel, the crew experience strange happenings, with Sofia recalling that she had been there as a child, witnessing the mass death.
After meeting with the hotel owners, Eric and Sofia explore the surrounding area with the rest of the crew settling in the hotel. The camera operator and sound grip, lured by curiosity to further document the hotel, find themselves in the basement, chased by an unseen presence. The grip is murdered whilst the camera operator escapes to warn Eric.
Elsewhere, the owners are shown to be engaging in ritualistic and cult like activities, with Eric realising their ill intentions towards him and Sofia. On his way to get her, Eric is sidetracked by seemingly ghostly apparitions and is later told by the owners that they need to find custodians for the hotel in order to safeguard an evil that dwells within, having chosen him and Sofia as their substitutes. Refusing to become a part of the hotel and the cult, Eric and Sofia run from the resort, triggering an apocalypse and causing the sun to burn out.
‘The Ghosts of Monday’ seems like an ill-fated project that has undergone the treatment of too many writers. In its fairly brief runtime, the film manages to incorporate a plethora of tropes from the horror genre, amounting to almost every one of them besides aliens and science gone wrong.
Initially the plot revolves around the mystery of how and why the hotel guests died during the tragic New Years party in 1990, raising questions that aren’t really ever answered, as the film then switches to a ghost story, later turning into a creature-feature, then adding in an unseen mystery killer element and eventually closing out the story with a demonic cult conspiracy. The film provides for a confusing an even frustrating experience, as it seems to be on a sprint to tag in as many horror elements as possible, proving little to no resolution to the many story treads it initiates.
Eric, portrayed by Mark Huberman, fittingly forewarns the viewers early on in the film, discussing the docu-series he is there to film, admittedly not wanting it to be a “cheap carnival spook-house series.” Unfortunately his prophecy comes true, as the film is more confusing than anything, adding nothing to the pantheon, squandering the narrative opportunities it had raised for itself and delivering a cheap and forgettable experience.
‘The Ghosts of Monday’ is a mishmash of well-known and all too familiar horror film tropes. It seems to want to touch on everything that we as an audience have come to know all too well from scary movies, forging ahead and establishing itself as a doomed experiment, bringing about a mess of narrative elements and failing to resolve any of them.
Score: 0/4
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