“The city’s grubby transparency appears as a hallucinatory grid of screens, windows and doorways shot on digital and framed with intense control in A Ghost in the Machine. A man is followed by a camera that scans buildings, interiors and streets viewed like CCTV, its movement mechanical, at other times detached and ghostly.
He is involved with a group that can service financial problems in return for contract killing, but the menace compounds as a murder is enacted alongside his younger companion, and the presence of unknown forces become apparent in the sound design and fluorescent landscape. A genuinely frightening shot midway shows the man’s troubles extend beyond debt and his threatened tenure, as polaroids presented by the organization announce the next target.
The overall effect is that of a digital nightmare, the inhuman tone reminiscent of Ring, particularly in a related shot at a train platform with the disembodied feet of another person, while the interface of New York’s subway is featured prominently throughout and in the thrilling opening. The action culminates with alarming, trippy style in a sequence at the protagonist’s apartment, and the entire film is paced with a deliberate and unexpected rhythm. By the closing scenes we’re alleviated by open space and yet the screen judders and birds disappear above water as the man walks out of the frame.”
