This week is a movie that some people thought would’ve been good though I had my doubts when it came out. Thankfully I’m not wrong in my concerns. Of course I’m talking about Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Don’t be fooled by the look and release of this movie. It is in no way shape or form a sequel/prequel/related to the other Ghost Rider movie staring Nicolas Cage. Why is this a bad movie? I’ll let you know all the dirty secrets.


Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance follows the life of Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage), a stunt driver with nerves of steel. Worried about his father’s deteriorating health, Johnny makes a deal with Mephistopheles/Roarke (Ciarán Hinds) to save his father’s life. In turn Johnny is given the burden of Ghost Rider, a spirit of the underworld who judges all evil in the hearts of all men. Fearful of the Rider within him, Johnny finds seclusion in East Europe till he gets a house call to protect a child of supernatural origins.


Okay so I know what you’re thinking: Why watch Spirit of Vengeance? It is a terrible movie so why spend the time on it? Well I wanted to put the final nail in the coffin of this series. There are so many things wrong with this movie. The terrible acting, contrived plot, mixed with some terrible camera pans makes this one of the hardest movies I had to swallow in a long time.

While the creative team tried to differentiate this movie from the original, they ended up doing more damage then good. The story ignores the events of the first movie by retelling the entire back-story of Ghost Rider story in comic vignettes. This is fine, but then the story just goes off in a tangent about some weird church business about how the kid that Johnny is supposed to protect being some body host for the Devil himself. Fine, I can handle that, but don’t put in random characters that have no meaning to the movie in the movie. The mother of the child, Nadya, doesn’t really have a huge role to play other then the fact that she too made a deal with the Devil in return for her first born.


I actually had a hard time trying to follow the story, if not for its confoundedness, but for the crazy fast camera pans. It totally detracted from the experience of the movie but there was far too many of those random pans back and forth. I understand that it makes the time pass faster but it just became annoying after the first five minutes which it after the length of the movie it becomes borderline nauseous.

Nicolas Cage cannot act and if there was any evidence of it it’s here in Spirit of Vengeance. I was alright with him in the first one but he just goes over the top with crazy. It’s fair that he had to fight back the Rider somehow but he didn’t have to go from broody to Fruit Loops crazy. It’s just uncalled for.

I’ll be honest; this movie is a waste of time. The only reason why I watched it not because it’s on Netflix. No, Netflix shouldn’t let this drivel on its service. It was on a free Video on Demand service. Don’t waste your time. While it’s spurts of pretty good CG is nice to look at, it’s not enough to save the rest of this train wreck of a movie.