You know the drill by now; Netflix comes along with a brand new genre film that cost a pretty penny to produce, loads it up with recognizable stars and an intriguing high concept premise, and debuts it on the platform to immediate success while critics do little more than shrug their shoulders. Right on cue, We Have a Ghost has arrived to keep the streak alive, ironic given that it’s about someone who died a long time ago.
Per FlixPatrol, Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon’s most ambitious and accessible feature yet has lived up to its end of the bargain by instantly securing the number one spot in 54 countries around the world, finally ending the reign of terror that’s seen Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon’s forgettably frothy Your Place or Mine hold the global charts in a stranglehold for almost two weeks straight.
The downside is that the $75 million expansion of Geoff Manaugh’s short story Ernest has only managed to cobble together a Rotten Tomatoes score of 45 percent, with the excessive running time and failure to balance so many disparate genre elements into anything resembling a unified tone among the most recurring criticisms.
Given that We Have a Ghost is a big budget, effects-heavy supernatural adventure that boasts David Harbour, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Coolidge, Tig Notaro and others among its ensemble, there was no other outcome besides overnight success. That being said, the constant procession of half-baked Netflix originals being churned out on such a regular basis is beginning to grow a little tiresome, but there’s still plenty more to come.
