Colin Farrell’s Ballad of a Small Player Is the Ghost Story to Beat in 2025
Forget jump scares. Colin Farrell’s Ballad of a Small Player is the year’s most haunting film, as Edward Berger distills Lawrence Osborne’s tale of sin, addiction, and redemption into a hypnotic gut punch.
File this under: ghost movie that barely behaves like one, and that is exactly why it works. Edward Berger’s take on Lawrence Osborne’s novel is quiet, unnerving, and kind of gorgeous. No jump scares, no CGI specters popping out of vents. Just Colin Farrell, moral rot, and the sort of haunt that feels like a hangover you can’t shake. Honestly, it might be the best ghost-adjacent movie I’ve seen this year.
The basics
Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a busted gambler hiding out in Macau under an alias, bleeding cash and options. He collides with Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a loan shark with a presence that’s more unsettling than any phantom. The more Doyle leans on her, the more the film leans into sin, addiction, and whether a person can actually change without any thunderclaps from beyond.
- Release: October 15, 2025 (limited theaters)
- Streaming: Netflix (US) — available now
- Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton
- Director: Edward Berger; based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne
- Scores right now: IMDb 5.9/10; Rotten Tomatoes 51% critics, 56% audience
How the movie haunts without doing the usual ghost-movie thing
The story threads itself through Macau’s Hungry Ghosts Festival, where people leave offerings for the dead. It’s not just local color; it’s a countdown clock. Doyle is barely keeping his scams straight when Dao drifts into his orbit. She scribbles a code on his hand and, boom, he’s back on a hot streak that feels less like luck and more like a trap. The further he chases it, the more the film turns his gambling into a haunting in plain sight. Mirrors warp. Faces blur. He’s not scared of a demon in the room; he’s scared of the guy in the reflection.
Dao’s presence keeps slipping between practical and otherworldly. Later on, the movie all but dares you to decide whether she’s a person, a memory, a ghost, or just Doyle’s wishful thinking given form. Berger wisely underplays this. There’s a late reveal of sorts, but it’s sanded down to a whisper, not a twist. Whether she’s real isn’t the point; what she does to Doyle is.
The endgame (and why it lands)
By the time the chips stop clacking, Doyle is making a choice that actually costs him. He burns his winnings as an offering — a literal give-it-up act that echoes the Buddhist ritual of burning joss paper for the dead. No sermons, no triumphant swell. Just a man trying surrender on for size. Even the names pull weight: in Chinese, 'dao' can mean 'the way,' while 'ming' can mean things like 'bright,' 'fate,' or 'life.' And that’s basically her function in the story — she nudges him toward a path that isn’t about grabbing more, but letting go.
What the movie is really doing
Doyle is the embodiment of bottomless Western appetite: consume for the sake of consuming. Dao is the counterweight, easing him toward a different math — one where release beats hoarding. The film isn’t preachy; it just lets her choices ripple through him until he has to decide who he actually is. That isn’t some grand redemption arc. It’s acceptance. Small, painful, earned.
If you’re craving loud scares, this won’t scratch that itch. If you want a slow, eerie walk through guilt, luck, and the cost of keeping your soul, press play. 'Ballad of a Small Player' is streaming now on Netflix in the US.