British ghosts, innit?

Today’s movie is Polterheist, a recent addition to Tubi and a film that came out back in 2018. Now I’ve been watching a lot of hour and a half films because I like to jog on my treadmill and I’m slowly working my way to over an hour with the goal being to be able to watch a full hour and a half film and stay on the treadmill that whole time. I’m not going slow, it’s a mini-treadmill with no handrails for balance and I keep it at a 3.4. That gets me to about 5 miles in an hour.

Not to be confused with this 2017 Steam game of the same name.

Polterheist was directed and written by David Gilbank, best known for his 2017 short film Polterheist. As of right now, Polterheist is the only feature length film he has directed and the last thing he has directed. It looks like Gilbank has since retired from working in movies and is now in marketing.

There are also a lot of photo-less names on the IMDB page. Polterheist stars Sid Akbar Ali as Tariq and Jamie Cymbal as Boxy. The two men have recently murdered a man named Frank (no actor) and have been given an ultimatum by their drug kingpin; find the drug money in 72 hours or they’ll be beaten to death with a cricket bat. Normal gangster shit. The duo may just have an opportunity to get in touch with Frank and find that money as a real life psychic named Alice (Jo Mousley) appears on the public docket having helped the police find the bodies of two missing children.

So Boxy and Tariq kidnap Alice, have Frank possess her body, and go on a trip to find the money. Meanwhile Uday (Pushpinder Chani) gets his dick sucked multiple times by one of his many druggie whores because he’s a big drug kingpin and that’s just what they do all day every day. I wouldn’t know personally but that’s what the films tell me.

Polterheist is a very Bri’ish film, by which I mean in a different world this would be a straight up Hood Tubi movie if it was set in the US and was about Philadelphia gangsters. There’s a lot of alcohol, a lot of breasts out for our viewing… pleasure? I don’t know. There’s women dancing and it might be sexy to someone, if you’re the type who just needs to see nudity to get it going. I kinda wanted more out of it, like maybe if some of those dancing women were men. But that’s just me.

It’s like British Reservoir Dogs. Reservoir Bruvs, innit? I will say off the bat that Polterheist is not a very good movie, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it’s so bad. Maybe it’s the ridiculous acting chops on most of the cast with the exception of Pushpinder Chani, who is seemingly the most seasoned actor and definitely the most charming of the bunch. There’s an odd mixture of serious and comedy, as the film in one minute has some heartfelt moments and then in the next Jo Mousley is vomiting an impossible amount of water into her own living room to remind us that yes, she is housing Frank who was in fact drowned.

But there are some good moments between Boxy and Frank, as we see the two going back to their roots as just a couple of chaps hanging out. I got a little scared for a minute that Frank was going to offer to let Boxy mash his clam, as the British would say, but that doesn’t happen. Tariq is also a pretty good character. There’s a whole subplot of the police tracking down who killed Frank in order to stop a possible impending gang war, but that never goes anywhere.

Polterheist tries to do too many things and doesn’t do any of them particularly well. There’s some horror, but it’s crap. The comedy never made me laugh, which is just high praise for a comedy movie, and there’s really no heist to speak of. The film never quite knows what the character’s relationships to each other are at any given moment.  The best thing I can say about Polterheist is that it wasn’t cringey. For an hour and 30 minute movie it was completely serviceable and I didn’t hate it. Granted the last half hour I spent glued to the couch cradling my big tumbler and knowing there was only a half hour left did help.

Should you watch Polterheist? Maybe. I wouldn’t rate it as a “stay away” but maybe put it on the list until it really catches your eye one day. Sid Akbar Ali is also a really good actor.

Rating: C