It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I saw this movie at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2007. I didn't expect it to stay with me, but it has. It recreates the experiences of a young Chinese woman who pays a human trafficker to get her into England, where she can earn money to send home. The film tells the story of her six-month journey to England and what her life was like after she arrived there, which is, in essence, invisible, undocumented slavery. The title of the film is problematic; many people probably expect a paranormal thriller. But I understand why the filmmaker chose it. Ghosts are beings who live among us but are invisible. Like two parallel universes, two different realities living layered together but separate and invisible.(Spoiler ahead) The film's climax comes the day she and her fellow workers are driven out onto a huge flat beach to dig for cockles. The hours go by, and they keep digging. Finally the water is coming up around their ankles and they must go. But they realize they have no idea which way to go. In all directions, miles of empty sand beaches stretch out as far as the eye can see, and they've lost their bearings. Their van is soon swamped. The woman ends up standing on top of the van with the others in utter darkness, trying to call her mother so she can hear her son's voice one last time. Thankfully, someone got through to some emergency services and they were found and saved, but not before 23 people drowned. The young woman survived. This happened on Feb. 5, 2004.Recently I ran across a reference to Morecambe Bay in Lancashire emphasizing how dangerous it is, and realized this had to be the location from that movie. Indeed, it was. Morecambe Bay lies on Britain's west coast, halfway up the side. It is actually an estuary, the mouth of five major rivers and their peninsulas along with seven islands. It is the largest expanse of intertidal mudflats and sand in the UK, covering 120 square miles. At low tide, you can walk between the islands and far out onto the sands, but the bay is notorious for its quicksand and fast-moving tides. It is said that the tide comes in "as fast as a horse can run." For centuries, there have been royally appointed local guides called "Queen's Guide to the Sands" to take people across safely. The Chinese boss probably did not know this.When I saw this film, I had a hard time understanding how these people could become so lost out on the sands. I'd always imagined the tide coming in like you see in movies. Nice big waves coming from one direction, in toward land – in other words, with a discernible direction. But I know now that in mudflats, the water just seeps in around you. And with 120 miles of sand, there's plenty of ways to lose your bearings. The overall tone of the film reflects that disorientation very well. The action may seem mundane, but the sense of disconnectedness is powerful and memorable. The Chinese woman is helpless, powerless, lost, like being in suspended animation. Time loses all meaning except for your work shift. There is no context, no cushioning reality outside your own. Psychologically, the woman is utterly alone."Ghosts" is an ultra-low-budget film with amateur actors, nearly all the dialogue ad-libbed – there is nothing particularly memorable about the film as such. And yet it comes back to me when I see video of desperate Syrians carrying only a water bottle, telling about loved ones lost in the water in the dark. I remember that Chinese woman, how alone she was, how powerless, how disconnected. Europe is full of people like her, and probably so is the US. When you take them as a group, you see the bigger political picture, the logistics, the impossible problems. But when you take them as individuals, you see a human being who needs help. In that regard, I have to say, eight years after seeing this film, "Ghosts" stays with me.

In February 2004, twenty three illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in Morecambe Bay. This film follows the journey of one immigrant, Ai Qin, who sets out from China to travel to England to make a lot of money to support her young son. The travel is expensive (£25,000) and the journey takes over six months, illegally grossing many borders by hiding in containers or secret compartments. When she arrives in London, Qin finds herself taken north where she joins a crowded squat of other Chinese people and, after purchasing fake papers, gets hard labour jobs with long hours and low wages.I'll be honest and say that Ghosts sat on my HDD for around about eight months before I finally got to watching it – it just never felt like I was in the mood for it. Tonight I decided to watch it and in a way I still feel a bit like it was something I had to see rather than was glad that I saw. It is not a great film and I think it is worth me saying that out loud. A lot of the very positive reviews I have read have tended to focus on the importance of the topic, the scale of the problem or the human suffering involved. These are not things of Broomfield's creation nor things that the film should be credited for. In tackling these subjects I have no qualms acknowledging that the film is certainly "worthy" but this should not be mistaken for the film being brilliant.That said, it is a good piece of work that does gain credit for highlighting the subject in a film. The making of is typically Broomfield and is a documentary style without formal script or professional actors. At times this does hurt the film because some scenes are clunky and more than a couple of performances are stiff and unnatural. Fortunately these do not badly affect the film in the main, in particular Ai Qin Lin is very convincing and touching in her turn, and many of the other main players are good. Broomfield doesn't help himself either because not only is the film slightly longer than it can bear, but he does labour his points heavily at times. In one scene we have a clumsy piece of dialogue where one characters asks where the vegetables they are illegally picking will be sent and "Asda, Sainburys, Tesco, supermarkets" is the reply. This is a crass and clumsy way to make a good point – and it does damage the point. Sadly there are several examples like that one, not least of which is the caption that declares the British Government has refused to help pay off the debts the families of the twenty-three still have, as if that is the crux of the problem.Despite these issues the film is still quite good but, because of them, it is not as great as many would have you believe. However it is an important and worthy film and, for all its flaws I would still recommend you see it or the good it has in its making, message and topic.

The dreadful plight of illegal immigrants to the U.K. has been highlighted in a number of films, including Michael Winterbottom's 'In This World' and Channel 4's miniseries 'Sex Traffic'. While Nick Broomfield was motivated by the tragedy of the deaths of Chinese cockle-pickers in Morecombe Bay to abandon his normal style (of self-led investigative documentary) to film a dramatic reconstruction of their story. He handles the transition in styles well, and his film is realistic, harrowing and marked by striking photography of Britain's ugly-beautiful underbelly. Particularly good is the portrayal of the gang-master, a villain, yet also a victim at the same time. If there's a criticism its that, judged purely as drama, the story is almost too harrowing, with no hope of redemption at the end. But of course, the events depicted actually happened and, with the exception of the final chapter, continue to happen: this is an important film, and one that asks awkward questions for those of us rich off the backs of migrant labour.

i saw this very recently and i implore everyone to see it.this film is brilliant in it's illustration of the lives of people forced to take desperate measures.the need for money being at the heart of the story, and money having no heart being part of the problem.one question it raises is responsibility, and you can't help but think governments across the world must change the economic and subsequent social situations that require these pyramids of suffering to occur.i particularly enjoyed the depiction of English racists, very life-like disgusting ignorant and often ugly.the greed greasing the wheels of exploitation on every level was thought provoking.in all an absolute masterpiece