Ghost Track (2022, directed by Jason M.J. Brown)


Years ago, a teenager named Morris died when he was run over by a train while five of his friends helplessly watched.  Even though they did not mean for him to die, Morris’s friends grow up feeling guilty.  Years later, all of Morris’s now-adult friends find themselves being stalked by a ghostly presence who slips notes under their door telling them that they are going to die.  Marcus (Adam Probets) thinks that Morris is responsible for the disappearance of the school bus that was carrying his son (along with many other children).  Can Morris’s friends put his soul to rest before he kills all of them?

I will give this movie some credit.  Considering that it wasn’t made for much money, the scenes around the train tracks are effectively shot and feature vivid cinematography.  The inside scenes are too darky lit but the movie looks fine whenever the action moves outside.  Ghost Track also had one good twist towards the end.

For the most part, though, Ghost Track was poorly acted with some of the least convincing death scene that I’ve ever seen.  I think part of the problem is that I never felt like a knew who the characters were either before or after the accident with the train so I never knew how their lives had been effected by Morris’s death.  Plus, the subplot about the missing school bus felt like an unnecessary distraction.  Maybe if we had actually seen the kids on the school bus before it disappeared, it would have been different but instead, the school bus is something that we hear a lot about with really having the context to know what to think about it.

Ghost Track felt like a feature-length version of one of those public information films that the BBC used to air, warning children not to play on the railroad tracks. It’s just not as scary as The Finishing Line.