Having likable characters in a film has never been a hard hurdle when it comes to the audience. Making them relatable and a character you want to root for is more tricky but just likable is easy. Characters the audience enjoys make them more likely to want to see them survive and succeed, which can be very important in the case of a horror movie. In Ghost Killers Vs Bloody Marry the likable characters are scarce and more often than not slaughtered before they can have any importance to the story.

The Ghoul Busters, a small-time paranormal investigation team, hasn’t had the fame and success that they hoped. Their YouTube channel is riddled with hateful comments, none of their investigations have turned up any ghosts, and they are about to be thrown out of their headquarters. Luckily enough a local school has been suffering from a haunting and the principle has given them one night to prove its a hoax and get out. Unfortunately for the Ghoul Busters, this is no easy payday as the bloodthirsty spirit of a little girl is haunting the halls and refuses to let them out alive.

The characters of the Ghoul Busters are Fred the team leader, Jack the ghost technology guy, Caroline the team’s psychic, and Túlio the cameraman. From the get-go, they constantly take advantage and are rude to Túlio, to the point of them being just plain unlikeable. While it would be forgivable for them to just be pompous tools, that shape up after the real horror sets in, they just continue to be that way for the film’s run time, to the point where they leave Túlio by himself to escape a deadly situation. In horror-comedies like Shaun of the Dead, there are characters with unlikeable qualities but they are complex enough to have good and bad factors about their personalities. Ghost Killers VS Bloody Mary only seems to have one-dimensional characters and anyone half decent is thrown to the wayside to leave more time for the degenerates.

Regardless of how I feel about the characters, I was pleasantly surprised to see a horror production of this scale using practical effects. While there were moments when special effects were needed, the ghost disappearing and reappearing, almost ever goopy blood effect was real and over the top. The poor story and characters do rear they’re heads, unfortunately, where a good number of the practical effects were used on childish crude humor that felt like it was looking for pity laughs at the ridiculous spectacle.

Would I say that there is nothing to like about Ghost Killers VS Bloody Mary? Absolutely not, there are some genuinely funny moments and the practical effects are a joy to behold. What I would say though is that the unlikeable characters and more stupid moments of the story keep it from being an enjoyable or memorable experience.

5 out of 10