Film Review: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Who are Neveldine/Taylor? The Directing duo responsible for the sloppily shot and chopped actioners Crank 1 & 2 and Gamer. Their signature hallmarks? Grainy, ugly low angle shots, boorish jokes and a sensibility that if transcribed would only register in two variations of grunting. In other words, the oeuvre of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is the perfect storm of a soiled art form: Rednecks with Cameras.

For Marvel Knights’ (Marvel’s banner for their ‘darker’ offspring) second entry, this edition of the ballad of Johnny Blaze relocates the inaction to ‘Eastern Europe’ (not at all like setting your movie in ‘North America’) as we’re shunted through a ‘story’(?!) about a young boy and his jailbait mommy, ambivalent monks and poor old Ciarán Hinds as the devil. Whatever screenwriter David Goyer assumed would pass for an exciting chase movie, backfires miserably in the hands of such an incompetent directing team. The problem comes from everything Neveldine/Taylor stand for, they effectively take the worst of Michael Bay and Tony Scott (e.g. the ‘T & A’) and push it so far beyond good taste that no longer passes for amusingly outrageous. In a pact not dissimilar between the titular rider and the fallen one himself, the directors sold their competency for gratuitousness. But now they’ve been shackled to a PG-13/12A rating, unable to fulfil their R/18 rated antics they’re left to stagger around like a couple of newly neutered Dobermans.

Satanic deals always backfire and when your directors are stuck without their id or their capability to tell a story, is there even a film left? Is the film in question even in 3D? Given that Neveldine/Taylor’s favourite pastime on Crank 2 was bouncing a camera off of Amy Smart’s buttocks, 3D seemed to be a logical trajectory for this miscreant duet. Not surprisingly however, they fail to create even basic depth perception and fail utterly even in shoving things in our faces. The look of the film makes its predecessor look avant garde, the colour tones are bleached and miserable and the superpowers of the Rider and his new enemies are just as dank. There isn’t a single scene, shot or effect in the film worth writing home about. Every attempt to wow or stun fails as we don’t care and never will, the directors are so obsessed with making their movies badass that they fail to tell a basic story. But then we have a problem in rationalising this film in ‘basic’ terms, it tends to help matters if the directors have a concept of a story.

The worst feeling in the audio/visual torture that is Bone Rider: Spasms of Incontinence is just how boring it is. Sadly Neveldine/Taylor have fanboys and we will see them again to peddle their snot-encrusted, spittle-flecked, piss-soaked mode of filmmaking. Their ballistic attempts at engaging with a media art form will continue to fail and hopefully their coke-induced rush will wear off and they’ll gain some social skills. In fairness, they’ll have made enough by now for a dozen six-packs of Coors Light for the Daytona 500. It’s your money folks.

1/10.