“The only thing that’s haunted is your brain.”

Justin’s rating: Office Hallways: The Motion Picture

Justin’s review: Hey kids, remember Rollergator? I can tell by your wail of the damned that I’ve unearthed a memory that rent you to the core of your fragile being. Yes, that 1996 “movie” which was basically a barely moving alligator hand puppet who hitched a ride on a rollerblader while a surf rock soundtrack played incessantly and loudly. It might well be one of the top 10 worst films ever made, and not in a so-bad-it-was-funny sense. It was a gauntlet of pure pain… and it is not alone.

Indeed, Rollergator has a spiritual sibling. It’s pretty much in the same vein of things, and once again starring hack actor Joe Estevez (who, yes, is related to “those” Estevezes and Sheens) and made by many of the same people. Soon to be former friends, I give you Baby Ghost.

If you felt mildly perturbed that Casper the Friendly Ghost represented the death of some small kid who wasn’t granted peace in the afterlife, how will you feel about a baby that presumably kicked the bucket and then became a horribly deformed green monstrosity?

And you’ll have plenty of time to wrestle with the implications of deceased infants turning into restless spirits, because Baby Ghost doesn’t have a plot to distract you. It barely has anything to keep your brain occupied, because this is not a cinematic production. This isn’t even your friend’s Tik Tok reel. This is the movie equivalent of treading water for 74 minutes to meet some contractual obligations.

Some kids and their mom go to a nondescript office building to get some pictures taken, and the troublemaking little girl unchains some box that she found in a maintenance room (what). This unleashes Baby Ghost, a radioactive green puppet* portrayed in blurry chroma key that seems designed to make you recoil in disgust. You know, as most babies typically do.

The combination of actors who seem like this is their second day of speaking, audio that fluctuates wildly, and lighting that makes everything look like the Backrooms isn’t what completely sinks Baby Ghost, but it does chain heavy weights to the ankles of this movie. The real death blow is that there’s nothing of consequence in any scene.

Despite the setting being a huge office tower, there are only about seven people in the entire building. Maybe it’s a holiday? Anyway, the dorky photographer (Estevez), a few kids, a clueless security guard, a psychic, a maintenance worker**, and some robbers try to make it out of the building, but Baby Ghost and all of its grating giggling won’t let them leave. This is their personal hell now — and ours too — and we’ll all be here forever.

Since Baby Ghost isn’t exactly a deep well of character development, we’re left with Joe Estevez leading a cavalcade of buffoons who are trying to entertain the imaginary kid audience that definitely did not show up to watch. Estevez and Eric Roberts are two guys who never said “no” to a role while never proving that they were worthy of saying “yes.”

I don’t know why this film team kept trying to make the same awful kids movie, but it bumbled its way into a war crime and scarred a generation of children whose clueless mothers chose the wrong VHS tape to bring home from Blockbuster. It also scarred me, if you were worried.

*Repurposed from another Joe Estevez jam, Little Lost Sea Serpent.

**Who was in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, believe it or not.

Intermission!

• All of these people look like they’re being held hostage from just off-camera
• So much bubblegum blowing… and popping
• This little girl keeps taking out a security guard with a single punch
• “I’ve got the hearing of a rat! Wait, a bat!”
• She’s got a Tarot book? She’s a terrible psychic.
• “For entertainment purposes only.”
• The security guard’s gloves are beyond creepy
• Can you even hear half the audio in this movie?
• We’ve seen that half-rotten banana so many times now
• “Why I oughta!”
• Psychics should look like they work as waitresses at a pirate-themed dinner theater
• Did we need to go to a book to explain what a ghost is? Probably not, but this is gripping cinema!
• They’re actually calling the Ghostbusters.
• Her name is Mildred? And that’s funny because? Just call her “Milly” and get over it, ya fat Sheen.
• The baby ghost comes from 1635?
• Baby Ghosts like donuts. Good to know. Disgusting to watch.
• A Tiger Electronics game as a trap? The budget for this movie was truly bottomless.