a ghost story movie review

A Ghost Story

I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery ’s “A Ghost Story” is one of those movies. So I’m urging you in the first paragraph of this review to just see it and save this review for later. If you want more information, read on. There are no spoiler warnings after this because as far as I’m concerned, everything I could say about this film would constitute a spoiler.

This tale of a man who dies young and lingers around the property where he and his wife once lived is bound to be one of the most divisive films of the year. I didn’t know anything about it going in, except that its main character was a person who dies and spends the rest of the movie walking around mute, wearing a white sheet with eyeholes cut out of it. The film is a ghost story, in the sense that there’s a ghost in it, but it’s also many other things: a love story, a science fiction-inflected story about time travel and time loops, and a story about loneliness and denial, and the ephemeral nature of the flesh, and the anxiousness that comes from contemplating the end of consciousness (provided there’s no life after death—and what if there isn’t?).

The characters are so archetypal that they don’t have names, just initials. C (played by Casey Affleck ) is a musician who lives with his wife M ( Rooney Mara ) in a small house surrounded by undeveloped property somewhere in the vast flatness of Texas. C dies in a car crash early in the story but continues to linger on as a ghost, silently observing his wife’s grief and her eventual exit from the home they once shared. He stays in the house as new tenants move in, including a single mother ( Liz Franke ) and her two children (Carlos Bermudez and Yasmina Guiterrez) and some young, single people who throw parties with lots of bohemian artist-types. Time keeps moving forward. At a certain point the house gets leveled and replaced by a gigantic luxury condo-hotel type of development. C stays rooted to the spot where he died, as if he’s stuck in the “denial” phase of the grieving process.

The movie’s two most fascinating formal traits are its decision to keep C under the sheet for much of the film’s running time, and the way it moves its story along with hard cuts rather than dissolves, fades-to-black, or other signifiers that a lot of time has passed. The sheet denies the film’s leading man most of the tools he’d normally use to communicate emotion. He must instead approach the character as if he were onstage in a play where gestures are more important than words, and try to convey surprise, sadness or anger by holding his head and shoulders in a particular way, or turning quickly instead of slowly to look at something.

But this opens up a different kind of relationship between character and viewer: we’re projecting ourselves onto C as we might as children playing with dolls or stuffed animals. Simple, powerful emotions can be summoned that way, and it’s those sorts of emotions that are this movie’s specialty. There were many stretches where I was reminded of European art cinema classics like “Stalker” and “ The Passenger ,” which derive much of their power from asking you to commit to staring at the images the film has put in front of you, and think about what they might mean and how you feel about them. There are other times when the film is reminiscent of “ Groundhog Day ,” in its ability to weave guilt, karma, and fear of change into a story that might otherwise have played as a light diversion.

The hard cuts that move us through the story convey the idea that C perceives time differently than we do. In a scene that involves decay, which I won’t describe in too much detail here because it occurs in a context I didn’t expect to encounter, a body becomes a skeleton in a series of cuts that last about 30 seconds. The deeper we get into C’s story, the more Lowery teases our perceptions of time, until by the end he’s got us questioning the idea of singular, linear experience. (“A Ghost Story” would make a great double feature with Shane Carruth ’s “ Primer ” or Richard Linklater ’s “ Boyhood ,” two other Texas films about the perception and experience of time.)

“A Ghost Story” feels bracingly, at times alienatingly new. It’s a movie you can’t be quite sure how to take. There are moments where the movie seems to be handing you keys to interpretation, but I’d caution viewers against looking at such scenes for answers, because they have a rope-a-dope quality—as if they’re designed to bait and trap those who would sneer at this kind of movie. In any event, this is a film that’s more inclined to ask questions than answer them, much less give life advice. A long monologue by a party guest ( Will Oldham ) about humanity’s doomed attempts to leave traces that last, especially through art, would seem to suggest that a song C writes for M will outlast him, but we have no evidence of that. The film’s presentation of ghosthood as a purgatorial in-between state, inhabited by individuals who refuse to let go of the life they can no longer have, jibes with many Western religions’ ideas about the afterlife, but I don’t think the resolution of C’s story gives us any hope of Heaven; to me it seemed more like a warning to be at peace with the possibility that we may never know the answers to the big questions.

I should admit here that any take I can offer is provisional. I need to see the film a second time to sweep away preconceived notions that might’ve been lingering in my mind during my first viewing of “A Ghost Story.” The movie is so simple in its storytelling and its situations are observed so patiently that the result has a disarming purity, as if Lowery jammed a tap into his subconscious and recorded one of his dreams directly to film. It’s probably the closest that a lot of people are going to get to seeing a late-period silent movie on a big screen—a melodrama that deals in big ideas and obvious symbols, and that puts across fantastical concepts, such a ghost haunting the landscape over a period of decades, by putting a sheet over its leading man and having him walk around slowly and stare blankly at stuff. (Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo shoots the movie in the old-fashioned, square-ish “Academy” ratio, letting us see the rounded edges of the frame; this has a constricting effect, so that we seem to be spying through a keyhole at someone else’s life.)

People either seem to love “A Ghost Story” or hate it, with no in-between. It got mostly very positive notices during festival screenings, but on the eve of its commercial release I’ve found myself arguing with colleagues who think it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes and find it too precious, too sentimental, too much of a one-joke movie, or not enough of one thing or another thing. I loved everything about it, including the scenes I wasn’t sure how to take. I recommend seeing it in a theater because it’s a movie that has as much to say about our perception of time and permanence as it does about love and death. Much of the impact that it has, positive or negative, comes from having to sit there and watch it without interruptions and think about what it’s showing you, and how.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Casey Affleck as C
• Kesha Rose Sebert as Spirit Girl
• Rooney Mara as M

Cinematographer

• Andrew Droz Palermo
• Daniel Hart
• David Lowery

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Review: ‘A Ghost Story’ Has a Sensitive Specter With Time on His Hands

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By A.O. Scott

• July 5, 2017

For perfectly good reasons, the literature of grief dwells on the experiences of the living, the survivors who grapple with the pain of loss and the puzzle of absence. But maybe the dead have feelings, too. That, when you think about it, is the premise of a great many ghost stories, and also of “A Ghost Story,” David Lowery’s ingenious and affecting new film.

The specter whose story this is — let’s call him Ghostie, since even when he’s alive we never learn his name — indulges in some of the usual haunting behaviors. He knocks books off shelves, makes light bulbs flicker, opens closet doors in the middle of the night and subjects a terrified family to a full-scale, crockery-smashing supernatural tantrum.

The effect of all of this on the viewer is strange and intense but not exactly scary in the expected horror-movie manner. In an age of expanded, digitally enabled ectoplasmic possibility, Mr. Lowery takes a tried-and-true, low-tech, Halloween-costume approach. Ghostie is a bedsheet with eyeholes. Possibly with some digital enhancement, but basically a 6-year-old’s idea of a ghost. And why not? We intuit his moods through the drape and droop of the fabric (the thread count looks pretty decent), and infer a brooding, smoldering temperament behind the cloth. This may be because the person inside — or at least the person Ghostie used to be — is Casey Affleck .

Before his transformation into the title character, Mr. Affleck and Rooney Mara — her character is also unnamed — live together in a ranch house in the middle of somewhere. They argue a little about moving, but otherwise they pursue a low-key, harmonious, semi-bohemian existence. He writes songs and experiments with sound. She goes off to work in the morning. They whisper and look gorgeous and occasionally exchange tender, tentative smiles. In some ways these two (and the other human beings who show up from time to time) are the real ghosts in the story — abstract, almost theoretical creatures floating in and out of Ghostie’s troubled consciousness.

The couple’s brief time together sets a hushed, poignant tone and establishes the dramatic and emotional limits within which “A Ghost Story” will operate. Not that there aren’t jolts and surprises. Just when you think you’ve cracked the film’s circumscribed logic, it opens up and goes wild in ways at once too wondrous and too preposterous to spoil. As a metaphysician, Mr. Lowery is not hung up on rules, but as a storyteller and an orchestrator of emotional effects he appreciates the need for coherence.

Ghostie is not the only one of his kind in the movie. The dead (at least some of them) can communicate directly with one another and passive aggressively with the living. They can travel in time but not in space, which explains the existence of haunted houses. They witness our suffering and fear but have only the most limited ability to intervene, even though they seem to inhabit, albeit invisibly, the same physical world we do. After a while, Ghostie’s sheet starts looking rumpled and dirty. It’s the only one he has, and he’s been wearing it for a very long time.

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A Ghost Story was one of Sundance’s most buzzed-about films. It earns the hype.

Starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, the movie takes an intimate story of love and loss and turns it into something cosmic.

by Alissa Wilkinson

It’s an odd sensation: As we age, our memories pile up in physical places. Just today, I walked by a building I lived in more than 10 years ago and they all came flooding back: how I was living there when my father died, and when I got married; how we used to hear our neighbor downstairs playing jazz saxophone on hot summer evenings; how I cooked up big pots of chili and fed them to friends who sat on the floor of the tiny place, all 400 square feet of it.

The longer you stay put in one area, those memories stack up, sometimes overlapping with one another. Everywhere I go in Brooklyn, where I’ve lived for 11 years, now has some memory attached to it, and sometimes a bunch.

David Lowery ’s exquisite gem A Ghost Story takes this phenomenon and adds to it. For Lowery, the memories heaped all over a place take on more than just an abstract theoretical quality — they are ghosts. Tangible ghosts, which A Ghost Story renders as literally as possible: A person under a bedsheet, with eyeholes punched out.

Lowery’s ghosts are the kind we make in elementary school for a Halloween play, which seems fitting. The memories evoked by their childlike quality are a further reminder that our pasts hang around and haunt us, long past when we think they’ve slipped into history — and that’s the mystery of life that A Ghost Story spins into a yarn that’s more folk tale than horror.

For the first 45 minutes, A Ghost Story is an intimate story of love, loss, and grief

A Ghost Story starts out as a love story, and a sad one. After all, you can’t have ghosts without dead people.

The dead person, played by Casey Affleck, is C (who goes unnamed in the film, but has the one-initial name in the credits), a music producer married to M (Rooney Mara) and living in a small one-level house in Texas. They’re thinking of moving, though — or at least M is. C feels attached to the house in a way he can’t really articulate.

One night, lying in bed, they both bolt awake after hearing a crash on the keys of the piano in the living room — a piano that was in the house before they got there; the real estate agent tells them it had been there “forever.” They go out to investigate, but nobody’s in the living room, and eventually they go back to bed, nuzzling each other to sleep. Shortly thereafter, C dies in a car accident.

Or does he? Lying in the hospital morgue after M identifies his body and then leaves, C suddenly bolts awake underneath the sheet and sits up, then rises and leaves the hospital, still under the sheet (with two convenient eye holes cut in it now). He re-enters the house and discovers that while he can still watch M, she can’t see him anymore.

A wrenching series of scenes follow, depicting the full range of grief that M experiences, with Mara’s big eyes and placid exterior cracking in ways that feel so real they’re almost unbearable. At one point she pulls the bedsheets off the bed she used to share with C to wash them, then stops, sits on the foot of the bed, and just holds the sheets; it’s the first time she’s washed them since he died. And in the five-minute scene that’s sure to be the movie’s most cited sequence, she slumps onto the kitchen floor and eats a whole pie with increasing urgency. We just watch.

A Ghost Story changes into something unexpected midway through

But A Ghost Story isn’t all sorrow and grief. There’s a kind of deadpan humor throughout — the sheet ghost is comical, and there’s no getting around it — that complicates the film and rewards a rewatch.

Sorrow, grief, humor, irritation, love: Those are all parts of a life, and even after loss, life goes on. The ghost-that-was-C watches as M picks up the pieces of her life hesitatingly and then, midway through, does something surprising: She moves out of the house.

After that, the movie turns into something quite different, and it’s too perfect to spoil. For C-the-ghost, time ceases to run in its normal course. Years slip away in an instant, and the accumulation of memories becomes something almost cosmically wise, a meditation on the meaning of life itself. In one scene, we watch a slightly inebriated guy wax semi-eloquent on this topic, but it seems silly and pretentious next to the film itself. You can’t explain the meaning of life. You can only experience it, and that’s what the movie is after.

Lowery’s tendency as a director is to privilege images over dialogue. Sometimes he hangs on an image for minutes more than we’re conditioned to expect by most American films, forcing us to contemplate what we’re seeing. Not that it’s a burdensome task: Each shot in any of his films feels like it could be framed and hung on the wall. (Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo shot the film in a nearly square aspect ratio, with rounded corners, which only adds to the sense that we’re looking at a photo pasted into an album.)

A Ghost Story doesn’t have much talking at all (in some places, to comical effect). You have to watch and feel and experience what’s onscreen in order to follow the story, which begins to play with our expectations about time in ways that are ultimately deeply satisfying, almost cathartic. That means that when people do talk, we pay attention: This must be important. And as the movie shifts from realism to surrealism to something all its own, we’re carried along by what we see.

A Ghost Story mixes individual lives into a bigger cosmic story

A Ghost Story casts the afterlife as something we shape during life, shaded by our regrets and loves. We are not done with life until we reconcile those things about which we feel shame or remorse. In other words, the hereafter is a direct product of the here and now.

But for A Ghost Story , both life and afterlife is also bound up somehow with the story of the cosmos. It manages to share DNA with Ghost , Personal Shopper , and, implausibly, 2001: A Space Odyssey , all at the same time. If people’s individual memories pile up in the spaces they inhabit, then the collective memory of the whole human race is imprinted all over the universe, especially this earth we live on, with varying degrees of success. So in the Ghost Story universe, how we live today doesn’t just impact what our lives will be in the hereafter, but also what it will be like to be human long after 2017 is a distant memory.

Early in the film, M tells C that when she was a child, moving around a lot with her family, she used to write notes and stick them in the walls of her house, on which she’d written “little rhymes and poems, things I wanted to remember about living in that house.” It was, in a sense, her little attempt to put a pin in history, marking in a tangible way that she had been in that house, a part of its memory pileup. A Ghost Story feels like Lowery’s attempt to do the same — to mark what it is to exist now, and give us a film to rewatch and remember, too.

A Ghost Story opens in theaters on July 7.

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A Ghost Story Reviews

A Ghost Story is one of the most unique films I’ve ever seen. The gimmick of the bed sheet with the holes cut out for eyes could have come off as silly, but it never does thanks to the deft hands of David Lowery.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2024

For its sheer minimalistic approach, the film is a technical marvel in its own way.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Jul 1, 2024

Ultimately, A Ghost Story fails because it's too enamored with the gimmick of its be-sheeted ghost.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2023

A Ghost Story is unlike any ghost story you’ve ever seen. The pacing is measured, almost dreamlike, and within its mesmerizing one-and-a-half hour runtime there are at least half a dozen surprises you won’t see coming.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

On this date six years ago David Lowery’s ‘supernatural love story starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara opened in theatres. It remains one of the saddest and most beautiful films I’ve ever seen

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 8, 2023

…A Ghost Story is a mood piece and not for everyone, but it’s also a brave and original piece of cinema that muses thoughtful on the big issues…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2022

Its story is patient and personal; its presentation audacious and impressionistic. And I was captivated by David Lowery’s unwillingness to embrace our expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Four people walked out of the screening I attended of A Ghost Story. I found it to be a profoundly beautiful and sad story of loss and the passage of time, of impermanence and change.

Full Review | Jun 21, 2022

While the film proves to be an ambitious and inventive approach to the usual ghost story tropes, Lowery over-explains the more abstract ideas and underemphasizes the emotional ones, leaving his film admirable, if disappointingly empty.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 23, 2022

It just aches with loss. There are these edits that allow for the immediate unyielding passage of time, that show the world disappearing in the blink of an eye, that moved me

Full Review | Jan 14, 2022

Moving at the speed of molasses trying to drip UP a wall, the movie clocks in at just over 90 minutes, yet many fidgety viewers will swear it runs at least four hours. Yet for those who can get attuned to its leisurely approach, it's a fascinating watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 10, 2021

A limp, intellectually lazy, leaden load of grief-posturing... a hollow thing that wears sorrow as a fashion accessory in the hopes that it makes it look mysterious.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2021

What's unique about Affleck's performance is that he gives it almost entirely from beneath a flowing, white sheet. It's method acting at its finest.

Full Review | May 18, 2021

A sad and funny haunted house movie...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2021

This film just struck a weird sensitive strange chord with me.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 23, 2021

Some will absolutely hate it, some might cry, some might laugh at the silliness of it all. One thing is for sure, A Ghost Story is quite the out of body experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 15, 2021

A Ghost Story tells us to rejoice because, no matter how long we're stuck in the same place, every moment is an opportunity to begin anew.

Full Review | Dec 12, 2020

A Ghost Story is, for the most part, the best film that Lowery has ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020

Lowery crafts a haunting meditation on grief, the passage of time, the nature of memories, and the meaning of home.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2020

The acting is superb; more astoundingly, the filmmaking craft is perfect.

Full Review | Jul 1, 2020

Film Review: ‘A Ghost Story’

Director David Lowery reunites with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, defying horror movie conventions in this delicate portrait of a restless spirit.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Two days after David Lowery wrapped his big-budget “Pete’s Dragon” remake for Disney, he dove into a tiny personal project back in Texas: “A Ghost Story” cost next to nothing, took place almost entirely in a single house, and called for minimal special effects (the ghost in question wears a bed sheet for most of the movie). The result is a classic example of the “one for them, one for me” strategy that helps indie artists maintain their sanity while also working for studios. The audience for this quiet art-film curio will be decidedly small, but it’s clear why Lowery felt compelled to tell it.

Inspired by an argument the filmmaker had with his wife (he didn’t want to abandon the old house where he could feel the echoes of not only the memories they had shared, but also the past tenants who had inhabited it), “A Ghost Story” anthropomorphizes a given space in time. Sort of. Like an Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie translated for Western audiences, Lowery’s film offers an alternative view of the supernatural — and audiences expecting a straightforward horror movie will be disappointed. In fact, “A Ghost Story” could actually be better suited to a museum setting, where this intermittently effective conceptual experiment’s patience-testing approach might be most appreciated.

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Although audiences don’t have to wait long for the ghost to arrive, the “story” advertised by the film’s title proves more elusive. In lieu of a narrative, the movie mostly just observes a generic young couple, identified as C and M in the end credits (played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara , together again, after Lowery’s Malick-inflected “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”), as tragedy transforms their lives together. Statistics say that more than 50% of all car accidents happen within five miles from home, and sure enough, a few minutes into the film, C dies a few feet from his own driveway, killed in a head-on collision.

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Lowery doesn’t show the traumatic moment, only the aftermath, which is fitting for a project that is more lyrical than narrative. Framed in a nearly square aspect ratio and shot mostly at a distance, “A Ghost Story” shuns spectacle in favor of subtext, frequently allowing moments to unfold in almost tedious slow motion. In one scene shortly after C’s death, Lowery spends nearly four minutes watching the grieving M devour a pie in silence. As viewers, our natural tendency is to identify with the human actors on screen, but Lowery invites our minds to explore other possibilities — to consider the room, for example, and all the moments this couple may have shared there, or the countless joys and tragedies that have previously taken place within the same four walls that now strain to contain her suffering.

Ever so gradually, M moves on (in one scene, the ghost loses its temper, knocking books off the shelves after an unknown man dares to kiss her in the doorway of their home). Eventually, she moves out, leaving the ghost to interact with future generations of tenants, which include a Spanish-speaking single-mother and a pretentious amateur philosopher who sounds as if he’s stepped out of a Richard Linklater movie.

What does the ghost make of all of this? Lowery doesn’t give us much to go on. Apart from a lone sheet-shrouded caress while Mara’s character is sleeping, the ghost makes little effort to comfort or communicate with his former lover — though he does spend a good stretch of the movie trying to retrieve a folded slip of paper M stashed in the wall before leaving. At one point, the ghost notices a fellow specter in the house next door, and they communicate tersely via subtitles (a cutesy touch, as if borrowed from a Miranda July movie).

Otherwise, the ghost spends most of its time standing motionless and inscrutable in the corner of the room. At the risk of sounding unkind, Affleck has never been an easy actor to read. He’s a low-charisma mumbler who tends to keep his characters’ emotions bottled up (a limitation that Kenneth Lonergan brilliantly transformed into an asset for “Manchester by the Sea”), making him the rare performer who can convey as much with a sheet over his head as he does without. Who is this man, and what does he feel? Is he a musician? (He plays the piano, and at one point even sings.) Were C and M married? How long had they been together before tragedy struck?

After Mara’s departure from the house, Lowery — and his ghost — stick to the location, though the timeline begins to unravel, slipping forward and back through the decades. The ghost bears witness to the arrival of a pioneer-era stagecoach family and the construction of a futuristic skyscraper, presumably all on the same spot (though the movie is a bit vague on that count). It’s during this stretch that Lowery reveals the thing that went bump in the night at the outset of the film, while C and M were first lying entwined in bed — not so much a ghost from the house’s past as a phantom of their own unrequited future. It’s a beautiful idea, original enough to justify “A Ghost Story’s” existence, even if the whole thing could easily have been condensed to music-video length. While Lowery’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, it’s sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.

Reviewed at QC Room, Los Angeles, Jan. 18, 2017. (In Sundance Film Festival — Next.) Running time: 90 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release of a Sailor Bear, Zero Trans Fat Prods., Ideaman Studios presentation of a Scared Sheetless production. Producers: Toby Halbrooks, James M. Johnston, Adam Donaghey. Executive producer: David Maddox. Co-producer: Liz Cardenas Franke.
• Crew: Director, writer: David Lowery. Camera (color, 4:3): Andrew Droz Palermo. Editor: Music: Daniel Hart.
• With: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, McColm Sephas Jr., Kenneisha Thompson, Grover Coulson, Liz Cardenas Franke, Barlow Jacobs. (English, Spanish dialogue)

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A Ghost Story Review

There's a scene about half an hour into A Ghost Story that will reveal whether or not you'll be able to stomach the rest of the film. It revolves around Rooney Mara eating a pie. For 5 straight minutes. Maybe it isn't actually that long, but it sure does feel like it.

In this moment, you see Rooney Mara's character, M, insatiably trying to make herself feel whole again after the death of her boyfriend, C ( Casey Affleck ), by consuming a pie that her friend has baked for her. It's a scene that's way too long and on the nose. Yet, at the same time, because it's all one shot from the middle distance you know that Rooney Mara really had to eat that entire pie, and the way she carries the emotion, all with the ghost of C in the background, become more heart-breaking and soulful to watch. If you let it. If you don't, they you'll just be furious that you've wasted 5 minutes of your life watching someone eat a pie.

But (shock, horror) there's more to A Ghost Story than a copious amount of pie-eating. Directed by David Lowery ( Pete's Dragon , Ain't Them Bodies Saints ), the film opens on C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara) living in their small suburban home, and them, one night, hearing a bang on their piano. They're unable to find the cause of this noise. Then, a while later, C is killed in a car crash right outside the home. Shortly after M identifies his body at the morgue, C arises as a white sheet with two black holes and then makes his way back to the house. Over the next few months and years, C stays in the home and watches as M mourns and tries to process his death, before then trying to move on.

A Ghost Story feels like a visceral, emotional, primal scream of a response from David Lowery to working on the hyper mainstream Disney outing Pete's Dragon . Not that Pete's Dragon is a film that he should feel ashamed of, as it was a hugely enjoyable flick the whole family can enjoy. But A Ghost Story is the complete opposite. Bewitching, romantic, lyrical, and unquestionably original, A Ghost Story is a convoluting watch that leaves you feeling satisfied, even if you don't understand why.

A Ghost Story finds David Lowery embracing his inner Terrence Malick . There are lavish, haunting, impactful visuals, which he then contemplatively allows to fester in a dreamlike yet resonant manner. It is a film that asks it viewers to experience and ponder rather than bouncing to beats that they're used to, while challenging and asking its audience to explore the space, the mood, and the story being told. A Ghost Story wants you to feel rather than expect to be entertained or enlightened. For some, that will be too big an ask, especially as the film's scant narrative ponders huge themes of fate, legacy, and relationships rather than actually answering them.

David Lowery's presence looms large, becoming more decisive as A Ghost Story reaches the hour mark. Before then he strikes up a particularly potent symmetry with Rooney Mara, using minimal movement or dialogue to create striking, resting images and allowing her the time to convey, something that she does in a patient but affecting manner. Then, with half an hour left, Lowery grabs a hold of the film and whiplashes it in a variety of directions that are, in the moment, perplexing. So much so that by A Ghost Story's conclusion you know that you've felt something. You won't actually be able to fully explain what you experienced, but it will still definitely stay with you.

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'A Ghost Story' Ending Explained: What Was Written On the Note?

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The Big Picture

• David Lowery's A Ghost Story explores heavy themes of existentialism and loss across infinite time.
• The film follows a white-sheeted ghost haunting his wife and delves into the futility of human legacy.
• Through a time loop, the movie reflects on immortality through memories and legacy's enduring impact.

Legacy is something David Lowery knows a thing or two about. He's well into crafting his own, having written and directed The Green Knight , Pete's Dragon , Ain't Them Bodies Saints , The Old Man & the Gun and the focus of this piece — A Ghost Story . Given the title, you'd be forgiven for mistaking A Ghost Story for a schlocky horror. Make no mistake though — it will haunt you. A unique exploration of existentialism and loss across infinite time, the film meditates on heavy themes, giving little away. The viewer must work for every morsel of information received, and form their own views on the meaning of what is given. We aren't even told the names of the characters — we know them simply as M and C.

When we meet M ( Rooney Mara ) and C ( Casey Affleck ) they are a happy couple moving into a new house. Soon we see the happiness fade and the couple argues over whether or not to move out of the house. M, who has moved around a lot as a child, wants to leave but C wants to stay, citing the house's history as the reason he likes it so much. C finally agrees to leave, and then the couple hear a loud clang from the piano. After searching and finding nothing they return to bed. Before they move out, C is killed in a car accident. M visits him in the morgue and covers him with a sheet. He rises as a ghost, still covered in the sheet. After turning away from a bright light he finds his way back to their house and remains there, haunting M, until she decides to leave. We are not sure how long this is, as time is no longer a concept C is bound to now that he has passed away.

A Ghost Story

In this singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of existence, a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to try to reconnect with his bereft wife.

How Does 'A Ghost Story' End?

While prepping the house for sale, M writes a note, leaves it in a crack , then paints over it. M has already discussed that she used to do this when she moved houses as a child, placing notes containing little things she wanted to remember around so that when she went back, there would be a little piece of her waiting. C watches her go, but chooses to stay behind. By the time he gets around to looking for the note, another family have moved in. C then becomes much more like the ghosts we expected back when we thought this was a horror movie . Angered by the world moving on from him, he throws plates, flickers lights, and frightens the family into moving out.

Time starts to pass quicker now. Guests come and go from the house, and C keeps trying to pry the note from the crack. We only linger when one resident throws a party and a guest begins to deliberate on the futility of human legacy. What can humans do to ensure they are remembered beyond their short time on this plane of existence? Time will pass beyond anything a human can create, no matter how great — including time itself. Years drift on and the house is left in ruin. It is knocked down and replaced by a skyscraper. C attempts to leave this mortal coil and jumps off, only to find himself hurtling through time back to when the first stake was put in the ground by the original settlers. Centuries pass until C finds himself back in the house with M and his mortal self.

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So we discover he is in a time loop. The history he felt the house had that he couldn't leave was his own ghostly presence haunting the couple. Eventually, realizing the mortal C's death is imminent, ghost C collapses in a heap upon the piano, causing the noise that we saw at the beginning of the film. C dies again, and ghost C watches as his younger ghostly self arrives again. Infinite loops are possible which begs the question, will C ever be able to leave this place? He witnesses M leave the note again, but this time instead of watching her go, he immediately fishes out the note before the paint dries. He reads it and immediately vanishes, breaking out of the time loop, leaving only the sheet behind.

The Deeper Meaning Behind 'A Ghost Story's Ending

Ernest Hemingway said "Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal." This sentiment is echoed in A Ghost Story . We are kept alive in the memories of those who knew us and cared for us. The note keeps C alive beyond the passing of M, the memory of them embedded in the frame of the house . He is tied to this exact location in a physical way as well as a meta-physical way through the memories he created there. The cyclical nature of time means the ripples of grief and recollection echo throughout a longer period than the brief time a person is on the mortal coil.

But what is written on the note? We never see. Theories abound that it was the lyrics to the song C composed, a personal reminder of their love for each other, or possibly even a note saying she wouldn't be back. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. The content of the note was never needed to create an impactful ending. Addressing the movie's ending , the movie's writer and director David Lowery explains, “We thought about whether or not we should show it, but it doesn’t matter as much as just knowing that he got it," before adding that revealing M's message would only "complicate that moment — you’d see something, process it, and then wonder what it means." Ultimately, what's important is that C eventually gets to read it, and find the closure he needed to vanish from his current state of existence and escape the time loop. His legacy has finally ended.

The Legacy of David Lowery's 'A Ghost Story'

A Ghost Story 's overall contemplative and philosophical tone forces its viewers to reflect on love, connection, and loss without being too heavy-handed. Its subtle approach and nuanced storytelling create a quiet powerhouse that resonates deeply and stays with viewers long after the credits roll. Perhaps it is for this reason A Ghost Story ranks high among David Lowery's movies, currently sitting at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes . After A Ghost Story , Lowery would go on to make The Old Man & the Gun , The Green Knight , and Peter Pan & Wendy . It's certainly an impressive filmography. However, the Rooney Mara-led drama remains a standout in his career, an intimate examination of the human experience in its own way. The movie's poignant exploration of grief and loss against the canvas of time lends itself to its enduring legacy.

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Movie Review: A Ghost Story (2017)

• Howard Schumann
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• --> July 26, 2017

“And we’re lost out here in the stars. Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night” — Kurt Weill

Though the consensus of mainstream science is that ghosts do not exist, people’s shared experiences throughout history tell us that disembodied spirits do wander the earth, unfortunate souls who are unable to let go of their attachments to the earthly world they just left. David Lowery’s (“ Pete’s Dragon ”) touching meditation on life, love, and impermanence, A Ghost Story , sees life not from the usual perspective of the one left behind after a loved one dies, but from the vantage point of the dead, the ghost who remains attached to the physical world, looking for completion and release. A Ghost Story has little dialogue or plot, and the experience of passion and regret only comes through in a very limited way, yet a gentle mood of sadness, longing, and loss permeates the film and gives it its character.

In the film which is shot in a 1.33:1 ratio, a format that creates the experience of living inside a box (the way many of us do), Rooney Mara (“ Pan ”) and Casey Affleck (“ Manchester by the Sea ”), known as M and C, live together in a single-story house in suburban Texas, an ordinary house without many distinguishing characteristics. It takes its meaning in the film from the memories it holds of families and friends, of children decorating a Christmas tree, of the tinkling sound of a piano and the whispering of birds in the early morning, a panoply of life and love. As M and C proclaim their love and talk about their future plans, the idyllic scene is brutally interrupted when C is killed in a car accident and his body, covered by a sheet, is identified by M at the morgue.

C’s body, clothed only in a sheet that completely covers his body with two holes carved out for his eyes, rises from the slab and calmly walks out of the room, heading back across fields to the house with which he is familiar. Mara, devastated and alone, has no one to turn to communicate with and, in one memorable scene, expresses her grief by eating an entire pie in one take that lasts more than five minutes, an event that can try the patience of even the biggest devotee of art cinema. As the expressionless ghost wanders around the house, the film becomes silent except for the exquisite score by Daniel Hart (“ Ain’t Them Bodies Saints ”). At one point, the ghost sees a fellow traveler wearing a sheet with a floral pattern in a window across the street.

Since we don’t know how ghosts communicate and apparently texting is not available, Lowery provides subtitles of what is being said, which is not much. They don’t talk about the weather or how terrible humans are. One ghost simply says that she is waiting but doesn’t remember who she is waiting for. We know that there is a note hidden by M in a crack in the wall which the ghost works at retrieving, but finding the note is only one reason the ghost hangs around. He wants to be there for her even though he knows she is going to move on. When M does move out, the ghost remains attached to the house, traveling into the future to haunt a future resident, a Hispanic single mother (Sonia Acevedo, “The Jonas Project”) and her two children (Carlos Bermudez and Yasmina Gutierrez) who are enjoying life until big G, upset with their intrusion, does his poltergeist thing, throwing dishes around and causing both general and specific chaos.

Remorseful, the ghost returns to the distant past when a family who populated the site when it was nothing but grassland ends up with arrows stuck in their ribs, courtesy of the local Indians. A modern office building, also in the future, is his final destination, but, not feeling too happy there, he jumps out of a window from high above the street, but has as much success killing himself as did Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” At some point, the ghost attends a party dominated by an inebriated philosopher (Will Oldham, “Wendy and Lucy”) who thinks he has something very profound to say and morosely delivers a lecture on the idea that nothing lasts and that even the Earth will die as well as perhaps the entire universe.

Lowery has said that while he [Oldham] is basically saying, “Live each day like it’s your last,” he wants people to come away from A Ghost Story feeling like there’s a little more to life than just that. I would suggest that there’s a great deal more. In fact, the speech misses the point of impermanence and non-attachment. To live in non-attachment means that we recognize there was never anything to attach or cling to in the first place, that our separation from others is an Earth-bound illusion and that we are always connected to all things at all times, an experience that leads to joy rather than despair.

Yes, the swift passage of time can be scary and things do fall apart but, as the poet Rilke says, “This hand falls, nor yet this other. Falling all enfoldeth. Yet is there one who all this falling holdeth with unending gentleness?” Even ghosts must eventually let go.

Tagged: accident , connections , death , ghost , husband , marriage , wife

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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A Ghost Story Has a Ghost, But Maybe Not a Story

In the standard ghost story, the suspense hinges on whether or not there’s a ghost; in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story , it’s on whether or not there’s a story. The ghost is presented with tongue-in-cheek literalness. He’s played by Casey Affleck in a white sheet with holes cut out for the eyes. After sitting up on the table at the morgue, Affleck’s character (“C”) drapes the sheet over himself and returns — somehow — to his small ranch-style house, where he will remain, more or less, for the duration of the film. He watches his grieving widow, “M” (Rooney Mara), as she struggles to go on and stays behind when she drives into the sunset. (She actually drives into a sunset.) Seasons pass, occupants change, skyscrapers rise. And still the ghost stands, wondering what he’s seeing, what it all means.

That we know he’s wondering anything under that sheet is a testament to Lowery, Affleck, and the composer, Daniel Hart, who makes every instrument as plaintive as a cello and as spooky as a theremin. Lowery has a goofy streak: In a nearby house, he plants another white-sheeted ghost, who shyly waves to C through the window, and the spooks communicate via subtitles. (The credits identify the person under the sheet as a pop star known to everyone except Jerry Seinfeld .) But Lowery’s intent is dead serious, so to speak. C is like a man — an artist — standing outside his own life, watching his family supplanted and then swept away by history and in the ocean of time. In one scene, there’s a hipster house party with a magician and the musician Will Oldham as a “prognosticator,” who has a long monologue about how we “build our legacy piece by piece … to make sure you’re still around after you’re gone … Your kids are all gonna die and their kids will die …” He eventually gets to the exploding universe and the end of all matter.

Your response to A Ghost Story might depend on your capacity to reconcile its arty ellipses with its high sentimentality quotient. It’s as if the vaporous Thai favorite Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives had been reconceived by the maestro of clunks, M. Night Shyamalan. When the timeline abruptly resets itself, the film enters on-the-nose eye-roll territory. It’s one thing for C to observe the westward expansion that brought whites to the place where his house will one day sit, another to see — an instant later — a colonial family sprawled on the ground with arrows sticking out of them. Another eye-roller is the long shot of M weeping and eating an entire pie with her hands while C gazes on helplessly. It’s the sort of test that serious actors feel they have to submit themselves to once in their careers and I’m glad Rooney Mara can now move on.

But even at its most self-conscious, there’s something lovable about A Ghost Story . Lowery’s boxlike frame deepens the poignancy, and he evokes the passing of days, months, or years with real lyricism. Above all, the image of Affleck under that sheet while the movie goes on around him is indelible. I suppose it could be anyone under there, but the ghost links up with Affeck’s lack of definition, that fog-person quality that Kenneth Lonergan showcased so beautifully in Manchester by the Sea . I could feel Affleck in the tilt of the body, the quizzical angle of the head, and the teardrop shape of the eyeholes. Yeah, I think he’s under there.

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The Wildly Original Hauntings of “A Ghost Story”

There have been many great movies made in the past few years, but none that I’ve seen reflects as comprehensive an act of creation as does “A Ghost Story,” from the director and screenwriter David Lowery. It is a simple story of a house and its haunting: a young couple, played by Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, live in a small house in semi-rural Texas. (Their characters are not named throughout the film; in the end credits, the woman is called “M,” the man, “C.”) Early in the film, he dies in a car accident; after she observes the body in a hospital morgue, the young man rises in the form of a classic, nearly parodic ghost—a white sheet with two eyeholes. He leaves the morgue, returns to the house that he shared with the woman, and takes up residence there. This narrative hardly seems stocked with sufficient incidents to fill even a short film. But under the direction of Lowery, whose previous films include the historically resonant modern Western “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” (which also starred Mara and Affleck) and the tender, tactile remake of “Pete’s Dragon,” “A Ghost Story” is a quietly grand romantic mystery, a metaphysical vision of love that is inseparable from Lowery’s wildly inventive yet controlled way with the very stuff of movies: movement, performance, space, time, light, color, reflections, effects, talk, sound, and, for that matter, silence. The film, which pulls an epigram from Virginia Woolf’s story “A Haunted House,” is a jewel-like novella written directly onto the screen in images.

“A Ghost Story” ’s fiercely audacious originality is on view from the start, before any ghosts make their appearance. When C and M sit together, yet apart, in the sparely furnished living room, each using a laptop computer, Lowery uses the simplest of devices—focus, keeping C sharply in the foreground and M in the background—to suggest the distance of intimacy, a vague self-absorption that will, of course, eventually become clearer. Soon it’s apparent that a change is about to happen, because M is doing a major cleaning, which Lowery captures in a single ingeniously conceived and deftly realized image: a tilt of the camera down from the sky to a house sitting on a broad swath of unkempt grass. The camera tracks horizontally as M drags a chest laboriously from the front door of a small one-story house, toward the camera, as it passes at a tightly measured lateral glide from one side of the bare path to the other; she deposits it curbside with a pile of other garbage, and the camera then reverses course. The simple movement of the image along with that of the woman is “unmotivated,” which is to say that it’s not done to follow her movement, to emphasize her particular gesture, or to reveal any additional narrative details. It makes the moment feel as if it has its own distinctive identity and, moreover, makes each of the elements of an apparently unified frame burst forth in its own disparate identity.

The multiplicity of elements in a single frame—the seeming miracle of things being together in the same time and place—is one of Lowery’s decisive visual themes. When the couple is together in bed at night, a seeming slam of the strings of the pair’s upright piano by an invisible visitor leads to a twilight prowl that Lowery again controls with precise focus and delicate shadow. When they return to bed, the result is an exaltedly intimate nuzzle in a single shot that has a tightrope walker’s tensely thrilling uninterrupted duration. (Lowery’s control of time throughout the film is exquisite.) The interruption comes with another image, in daytime, of the front of the house; Lowery pans very slowly from it toward the street, where two cars sit silently, having catastrophically crashed; one of them contains C, who is dead. After M goes to the morgue to observe the body and leaves, the sheet rises with a jolt and then makes its way, seemingly invisible, through the hospital. The ghost passes in silence through vast fields and eventually reaches the house. Existing in an alternate realm of time, the ghost also has a tempo of its own, a phlegmatic, nearly shuffle-like glide that seems to temper the tempo of the entire movie—as if the movie itself were haunted, inhabited by this practical, ever-so-slightly yet overwhelmingly comical, silent ghost, who’s invisible and inaudible to the living.

That’s where the pie comes in. A real-estate agent named Linda (Liz Cardenas Franke) comes into the house, under the ghost’s watchful gaze; she leaves a pie for M, along with a note about showing the house, and she leaves. In a cut, M arrives and finds the pie; she begins to eat it while standing at the table—and finishes almost the entire pie while sitting on the kitchen floor, and then dashes to the bathroom to throw it up, all while being watched by the ghost, who’s there in the frame along with M but invisible to her. The scene has become the object of absurd critical quibbles and complaints that suggest, above all, the narrow range of directorial creations and the limited sense of imagination to which many critics have become conditioned.

Yes, M—which is to say Mara herself—eats nearly a whole pie in the span of two shots that run for about five minutes. And, yes, there’s both a psychological simplicity and a psychological vagueness to the action, suggesting both that grief is mind-bending and that people are weird. (Many critics seem to expect action to be mapped with a screenwriter’s index-card facility onto specific character traits.) But M’s increasingly frenzied pie-eating is far from the only thing that’s going on in the scene. There are M’s small gestures as she stands at the kitchen sink, opens the garbage can, goes through the mail. There is the changing afternoon light on the kitchen wall. And, as she digs with increasing vehemence at the pie, there is the ghost standing in the background, looking impassively at the woman he loves, whose suffering he has caused but whom he is unable to comfort. Though the action is of a one-line-screenplay simplicity, the images seem alive with the impingement of a world of nature and personal connections, of impulses and memories, in a single, pain-streaked but nearly comedic astonishment (Lowery’s alertness to the ordinary sounds that embody the existential weight of the gestures of daily life—the little noises M makes as she opens the foil, the sound of the fork clicking against the bottom of the glass plate—is surpassed only by that of Robert Bresson.)

The romantic mystery and supernatural wonder of “A Ghost Story” emerges from careful observation matched by freewheeling speculation; the movie’s dramatic power is inseparable from its hushed, sensuous splendor. There are heart-stopping moments of near-contact between M and the ghost of C, intricate reflections that render the ghost’s invisibility all the more poignant, flashbacks and recurrences that echo with the touch of the uncanny. One of Lowery’s grandest creations is the ghost-C’s silent conversations, in subtitles, with the ghost next door, which reveal that the fundamental role of ghosts is to wait—to return home and wait—as if making the impossible demand that the living do the same. A ghost is a diminished thing, both invisible and, seemingly, dulled and narrowed, enduring solely to see the lover left behind; the horror of a house’s haunting is ghostly wrath at a sense of abandonment by a lover who dares to move on, ghostly envy of happy people, ghostly resentment of newcomers who usurp the sacred space of lost love. Ghosts in the film, who take the age-old form of children’s-costume ghosts, are like overgrown children, reduced to primal emotion. Their sense of place, their attachment to the site of their former home, has an obstinate, childlike earnestness—hence the harrowed, perturbed, and fragile innocence of the ghostly gaze, which Lowery brings out in images capturing the slow, determined, frozen gestures of the ghost of C (Affleck under the sheet).

Lowery daringly advances time throughout the film in cuts (he edited the film, too), and the leaps ahead in time are matched by audacious shifts in space (ones too good to spoil), by way of architecture and urbanism, leading the ghost to contemplate a modern office tower in various stages of construction as well as the spectacle of city life that’s on view from its heights. (There’s also a daring and historically informed leap back in time, provoking a spiral of time that’s also too delicious to spoil; suffice it to say that afterlives connect joltingly with pre-lives.) After the ghost C chases a happy family out of the house where he’s awaiting M’s return, other people take their place: apparent art-world adults who hold a party at which a barroom philosopher (played by Will Oldham) delivers an extended, bombastic monologue about the futility of creation in the face of the ultimate destruction of the universe. The ghost’s silent contemplation (and dramatic response) and, for that matter, the entire film itself, is a refutation of that materialist point of view. “A Ghost Story” provides its own supreme and cosmic justification: what Lowery films, with his rarefied fusion of style and subject, is the existence of the soul.

‘A Ghost Story’ movie review by Justin Chang

Justin chang reviews “a ghost story,” directed by david lowery and starring casey affleck and rooney mara. video by jason h. neubert..

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A Ghost Story Review

11 Aug 2017

A Ghost Story

The tale of a dead man who haunts his old home wearing a bed sheet with the eyes cut out, A Ghost Story ’s semi-absurdist premise shouldn’t work. The shot lengths are somewhere between long and interminable, its star is a faceless presence throughout, and there’s a seven-minute scene with a pie. Some will find it overly grandiose (if you’ve ever wondered what Terrence Malick’s Rentaghost might look like, there are worse places to start looking), while its languorous pacing won’t be to all tastes. Yet, somehow, its gentle ruminations on death and mourning and the passing of time cast a powerful spell.

Certainly a film unlike anything else you’ll see this year.

The film begins quietly, with its central couple, ‘C’ and ‘M’ (with eerie anonymity, Affleck and Mara’s characters are referred to only by their initials), sharing a moment of tenderness on the sofa. “I’m so scared,” M laughs. “Why are you scared?” he asks. “I don’t know.” The exchange proves prophetic. Soon C is lying on a mortuary slab following an off-camera car accident. Here the film’s mysteries begin to reveal themselves. C rises from the dead and, trailing sheets behind him like a Scooby-Doo villain on a budget, returns home.

Invisible to his wife and with time seeming to accelerate, he witnesses as she first grieves then begins to move on with her life. With heartbreaking impassiveness, he just stands by, watching as she brings a date back to the house, and again as she prepares to move out. Across the yard, another sheet-clad spectre appears at the neighbour’s window. Ghost C is not the only one in this linen-clad purgatory, yet he’s very much alone.

Through all this, writer-director David Lowery offers a ghost’s-eye view on our place in the world that throws up the biggest of questions. How long will we be remembered? Can we really expect to live on beyond our deaths? Is everything that marked our time on Earth destined to be washed away? As one partygoer (a peppery cameo from musician Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) muses at a gathering in the house years later, all efforts to be remembered are doomed because, “By and by, the planet will die.” Cheering stuff.

As with Lowery’s first pairing of Affleck and Mara, 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints , a Texan crime romance with echoes of Badlands , the comparisons with Malick are apt again here: in the spirit of The Tree Of Life , A Ghost Story is both deeply intimate and vast in scope, bridging years, then centuries, before looping back on itself. Meanwhile, Daniel Hart’s score stitches together its long takes with sorrowful strings.

What’s hard to imagine is what the more straightforward horror movie Lowery originally conceived would have looked like. The closest he comes to delivering a jump scare is a banging piano lid, or some futzing about with lights as Affleck’s apparition succumbs to impotent rage. What he’s crafted instead is a genre all of its own — existential horror? Limbosploitation flick? Machine-washable indie? It’s difficult, and hard to love, but it’s certainly a film unlike anything else you’ll see this year.

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A Ghost Story

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Written and Directed by

David lowery, casey affleck and rooney mara.

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With A Ghost Story , acclaimed director David Lowery ( Ain’t Them Bodies Saints , Pete’s Dragon ) returns with a singular exploration of legacy, loss, and the essential human longing for meaning and connection. Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost (Academy Award-winner Casey Affleck) returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife (Academy Award-nominee Rooney Mara), only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away. Increasingly unmoored, the ghost embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life’s ineffable questions and the enormity of existence. An unforgettable meditation on love and grief, A Ghost Story emerges ecstatic and surreal—a wholly-unique experience that lingers long after the credits roll.

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A ghost story.

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• Parents Say 9 Reviews
• Kids Say 6 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Moving, poetic meditation on life, death, love, place.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Ghost Story is an artful, poetic meditation on life, death, love, place, and other things. Although it's not a horror movie (despite the title), it has a few brief moments of strong violence, including a dead body in a car crash (with a trickle of blood on his forehead) and a…

Why Age 15+?

Disturbing images. Dead man in a car crash with blood trickling from his forehea

A use of "f--king" and a use of "s--t."

A couple kisses tenderly in bed. More kissing. Shirtless male. Seemingly naked w

Sony headphones shown in one scene.

Background drinking at party -- beer and liquor. A character asks another whethe

Any Positive Content?

No clearly articulated messages, but plenty of ideas about life, existence, the

No clear role models. Most characters are simply enduring, although there's

Violence & Scariness

Disturbing images. Dead man in a car crash with blood trickling from his forehead. Parents and children killed by arrows. Bloody wounds shown. Bodies decompose over time, turning into scary, rotting corpses and skeletons. Scary noises, one or two jump scares. A temper tantrum, smashing plates.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple kisses tenderly in bed. More kissing. Shirtless male. Seemingly naked woman covering herself with a sheet.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Background drinking at party -- beer and liquor. A character asks another whether he's "OK to drive home."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

No clearly articulated messages, but plenty of ideas about life, existence, the earth, love, place, time, and more. Do ghosts exist? Are they tied to a person, place, or time? Does it matter what we do while we're here on Earth? How long does anything last?

Positive Role Models

No clear role models. Most characters are simply enduring, although there's something heroic about that.

Parents need to know that A Ghost Story is an artful, poetic meditation on life, death, love, place, and other things. Although it's not a horror movie (despite the title), it has a few brief moments of strong violence, including a dead body in a car crash (with a trickle of blood on his forehead) and a family slaughtered by arrows. Bloodstains are shown, and their bodies decompose over time, rotting somewhat graphically. A couple is shown lying in bed, perhaps naked (nothing sensitive shown), and kissing tenderly. Language is sparse but does include a single use of "f--king" and a use of "s--t." Some background drinking (beer, liquor) is shown. This is a simple movie that casts a delicate spell; many may resist it (some viewers may find it ridiculous), but others will find it profoundly transporting. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (6)

Based on 9 parent reviews

Spoiler Free and to the point without tipping the bit!

This film is more an experience than a linear project, what's the story.

In A GHOST STORY, a couple living together in a small Texas house argues. "C" ( Casey Affleck ) wants to stay in the house, but "M" ( Rooney Mara ) wants to move out. She's used to moving around and likes to hide little notes, stuck in the walls of homes she's lived in, as a way of leaving a piece of herself behind. The next day, C dies in a car crash, returning as a ghost. He silently watches M grieving, recovering, and -- eventually -- leaving. He watches others move into the house, sometimes haunting them, sometimes not. Time moves on, and things come and go. The picture grows larger and more cosmic, but the only thing the ghost really wants to see is what M left on her scrap of paper before she left their home.

Is It Any Good?

This very special movie casts a fine, delicate spell; many may resist it, but those who go along with it may find themselves profoundly moved, transported to a soul-stirring, poetically cosmic place. In A Ghost Story , writer/director David Lowery ( Ain't Them Bodies Saints , Pete's Dragon ) has created a deceptively small movie, confined in space (it uses the squarish, 1-to-1.33 screen aspect ratio), with very little dialogue and simple, spare effects. (The ghost is very deliberately nothing more than a guy in a sheet.)

But this simplicity is used to conjure mighty emotional reactions. Long, slow, still shots allow viewers to reflect on grief, death, life, love, and other things, while more startling transitions -- such as breathtaking leaps through time -- arouse larger, more existential questions. The haunting sound design and music are always note-perfect, and rarely, if ever, break the mood. A Ghost Story is everything from a heartbreakingly simple love story to a rumination on the meaning of place in our lives to a pondering of life itself.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about A Ghost Story 's violence . How frequently is it shown, and what is it meant to illustrate? How does it compare to what you've seen in other movies with supernatural themes? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Is the movie scary ? Have you ever seen a movie about ghosts that wasn't scary? Are ghosts inherently scary?

The "prognosticator's" speech makes it sound as if life is pointless. Do you agree or disagree with his ideas? What might be some issues with his thinking?

What do you think was written on the scrap of paper? Does it matter to the story to know for sure? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 7, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : October 3, 2017
• Cast : Rooney Mara , Casey Affleck , Will Oldham
• Director : David Lowery
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 92 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : brief language and a disturbing image
• Last updated : October 1, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

The Tree of Life

What Dreams May Come

The Fountain

Drama movies that tug at the heartstrings, best ghost stories for kids and teens, related topics.

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'Presence' review: Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp deliver a uniquely thrilling ghost story

What if a ghost could tell its own story but not speak? That is the wildly compelling premise of Presence . Director Steven Soderbergh reteams with Kimi screenwriter David Koepp for an unconventional haunted house story, creating a film that is sharply funny, beguiling, a bit chilling, and ultimately sweet.

And it all begins with a dizzying opening shot.

SEE ALSO: Steven Soderbergh's 'Kimi' is an electric thriller with an encrypted message of hope

The camera is a character in Presence

Presence opens within a house on the break of sunrise. It's still dark inside as the camera swans around from kitchen to hallway, up the stairs and through the bedrooms and back again. There's a slight fish-eye lens effect, even in the darkness, turning the corners of a house into ominous shadows. And the movement of the camera suggests not some passive viewer, but a perspective, a presence.

The next scene is established with daylight. The presence watches (as do we) as a posh real estate agent ( Julia Fox ) arrives to show the space to the Payne family. The mother, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), is immediately sold, gushing about how the location means her golden child Tyler (newcomer Eddy Maday) could be in the best school district to follow his trajectory as a trophy-winning swimmer. Meanwhile, dad Chris ( This is Us ' Chris Sullivan) worries the move would be hard on their other teen, Chloe ( Foundation 's Callina Liang ), who has recently lost her best friend to a presumed drug overdose.

The inherent conflict between Lui's smothering Boy Mom and Sullivan's earnestly vulnerable Girl Dad plays out in passive aggression and outright arguments, all with the wandering eye of the presence floating around as a silent witness. But this being, whose identity, name, and gender are unclear for much of the movie, is most focused on Chloe, who is alone in her grief — until she's not.

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The point-of-view perspective in horror is chiefly used to inspire fear in the audience, implying a sinister force or slasher is sizing up a potential victim. But here, the camera's movement conveys no ill intent, in part because of the way the presence tends to hide in Chloe's closet, as if it is scared, not aiming to scare. Props to Soderbergh, who also serves as the film's editor and cinematographer. Long takes that move from one room to another, following conflict and conversation, create a pulsing vulnerability for a character we cannot see or hear, yet understand all the same. I was in awe that when the camera pans from one hurting family member to another, I could feel the yearning of the presence to be seen, to join in, to scream. Presence is extraordinary for all it tells through its moving camerawork alone.

Presence' s cast is extraordinary

Of course, all Soderbergh's sublime cinematography could have been for nought if it weren't for a cast that could grasp the concept. As it is, I'll be absolutely shocked if Presence doesn't get a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination.

The film demands actors play out long takes that sometimes involve complex choreography. Within that, they need their lines to land on camera but casually. And beyond that, there's the creeping shift in behavior as the presence makes itself known. Some in the house begin to sense it, and their gaze must connect to the lens in a way that is present but not concrete. This way we believe that what they see appears as nothing, as the camera will never leave the presence's perspective to reveal the living's. Liang has the heaviest lift here, as she engages most directly with the ghost, sometimes sensing it, but also realizing how it has the power to move things in her room. Sharing this revelation with her family only sparks a fight and more violent paranormal activity.

SEE ALSO: TIFF 2024 preview: 15 movies you ought to know about

For her part, Liu is perfectly cold as a corporate shark with a ruthless sense of right and wrong, delivering a monologue to her smirking son that's so electrifyingly frank it sparked laughs from a shocked audience. Sullivan is her foil, playing a human teddy bear desperate to save his daughter from a despair he grapples to comprehend. Maday sizzles as a cruel jock who has little patience for his freaky sister, while Liang shoulders the bulk of the film, balancing her scenes of ghostly intrusion with meditations on grief and a budding secret romance with "the coolest guy in school" (West Mulholland in Jared Leto circa My So-Called Life mode). Together, they feel like a real family, the dialogue current and crisply natural, grounding the real so the uncanny hits all the harder.

Presence is a welcomed genre twist

Soderbergh has played in various genres from heist movies like Ocean's Eleven and Logan Lucky, to psychological thrillers like Unsane and Kimi , the espionage actioner Haywire, and the sexy comedies that make up the Magic Mike trilogy. While technically Presence is a horror movie in conceit, Soderbergh doesn't feel bound by the demands to make it spooky. In fact, the house is not remotely creepy. Admittedly, the music has a flare of whining instruments that recall gothic horror movies of the the 1940s, but this clashes with the girly-pop aesthetic of Chloe's bedroom, effectively underlining how the presence feels out of place here.

Credit to Koepp, who like Soderbergh has lept from one genre to another, with screenplay credits on everything from Jurassic Park to Mission: Impossible , Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and my personal favorite, the dark diva comedy Death Becomes Her . But his most relevant work to Presence is the woefully underrated Stir of Echoes, a 1999 horror movie, where Kevin Bacon plays a man with newly awakened abilities to commune with the dead. Now, Presence isn't as overtly eerie as Stir of Echoes , which is a more traditional ghost story in that sense. But they share a similar sensibility in Koepp's carefully constructed characters and final act twist. Essentially, his thumb print is clear.

Koepp employs genre conventions like poltergeist activity: objects moved when the living aren't looking or rooms trashed before their very eyes. But because of Soderbergh's committed POV shots, these actions don't feel like they're intended to scare as much as they are to express a wordless frustration. Likewise, when the family brings in a medium, Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), she looks nothing like you might expect. Rather than a frail white woman in black witchy attire, this supernatural communicator is a robust woman of color, wearing a warm flannel and jeans, as if she's just come from her job as a barista or a kindergarten teacher. These subtle tweaks give a thrilling sense of possibility to Presence , promising the audience it won't play by the rules and so the film could go anywhere. And where it goes it is not only satisfyingly surprising, but smartly sentimental.

In the end, Presence is a remarkable union of a clever concept and a superb execution. In the wrong hands, fumbled or flashy camerawork could have crushed the character building of the ghost. Soderbergh's steady hand is so mindful in its performance that you can practically feel the expressions of a face you cannot see. The cast expertly builds a believable and complex family bond while effortlessly completing choreographed blocking. And Koepp delivers a final act that is stomach-churningly tense yet tender. All of this collides to make a sublimely realized ghost story that is easily one of the best films of the year.

Shame you'll have to wait until next year to see it.

Presence was reviewed out of its international premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival . The film is scheduled for theatrical release in the US Jan. 17, 2025.

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‘Went Up the Hill’ Review: Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery Confront Trauma (and Each Other) in Chilly Ghost Story

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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Like most classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes, the story of Jack and Jill — who so iconically “ went up the hill to fetch a pail of water” — is pretty scary. Jack and Jill are simply going about their daily lives, chores and all!, when Jack takes a tumble and Jill follows right behind. Jack gets up, makes it home, and is patched up. We don’t hear anymore about Jill. We don’t know how she fares.

Fortunately, however, for as much as Van Grinsven leans on vibes (read: heavily ), he’s also cast a pair of compelling performers to add real dimension to this particular apparition. We first meet Jack ( Dacre Montgomery ) as he’s chugging his way to (oh, geez, fine, OK, we get it) a foreboding hill that he must climb to get to the world’s least appealing funeral. Set in remote, color-sapped New Zealand, we know the house he’s entering is moneyed and luxe, but it’s also deeply unwelcoming and, in the most charitable of words, looks a hell of a lot like something we’re more likely to find in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

Its inhabitants are not much better. Jack sneaks in during the last rites of recently deceased artist Elizabeth (who we never “see” and never really come to know, even as she will lord over nearly every frame and feeling of the film ). Elizabeth, we’re told by her grim sister Helen (Sarah Peirse, with a sneakily great performance ahead of her), left behind her “two greatest loves” when she passed: this house, and her wife Jill ( Vicky Krieps ). When she catches Jack’s eye, we get it just as clearly as he does: he was not included in this list of loves.

Despite Jack’s insistence that it was Jill who invited him to the event, it’s obvious Jill has no idea who the kid is, but that might be the least of her worries. Mired in her grief, she takes to sleeping next to Elizabeth’s casket, and when she asks Jack to say, she makes too tragic a figure to leave. Even in this state, Krieps cuts a formidable figure, a magnetic presence who Jack rightly believes is the only living person who can explain who his mother was. The key, of course, is living. Because Jack and Jill are not alone in the house, and each night, as they crumple into feverish sleep, they are visited by a spectral force: Elizabeth, who soon starts taking over their bodies at her leisure.

Whether you believe in possession will likely dictate how far you’re willing to ride with “Went Up the Hill,” and while Van Grinsven and co-writer Jory Anast struggle to unspool some key elements of said possession (though the “rules” of it eventually snap into place in the final act, a big help), Krieps and Montgomery sell the hell out of it. Early moments with the performers steep us in their mannerisms and motivations, so when Elizabeth “takes over,” the result is both a feat of acting and genuinely upsetting. But is it real ?

“Went Up the Hill” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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‘went up the hill’ review: vicky krieps and dacre montgomery are dazzling in a poetic ghost story.

Premiering in Toronto, Samuel Van Grinsven's film revolves around a woman and her dead wife's estranged son.

By Caryn James

Caryn James

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Toronto first look at time travel romance 'fate' with harvey keitel and faye dunaway (exclusive), toronto: actress-centric 'the room next door' and 'nightbitch' premiere, face different awards paths, went up the hill.

Jill has not phoned Jack, and wasn’t aware he existed, even though he is Elizabeth’s son, but she invites him to stay. At night, as in a kind of dream, they discover that Elizabeth can possess each of them in turn, speaking through them. She called Jack to come. In other hands that would be spooky, but Van Grinsven goes in a different direction. Jack is unnerved while Jill is torn between shock and joy at being able to hear from Elizabeth again, but they matter-of-factly accept that she can channel her presence. And there is nothing creepy about Elizabeth’s voice: Krieps and Montgomery sound like themselves, as the ghost takes over their words but not their physical voices.

Van Grinsven’s aesthetic choices mirror the mood of the story, and the eeriness comes as much from his technique as it does from any plot turn. At the start, the sound effects by Robert Mackenzie might be wind but also might double as a moan or howl. Especially at the beginning, the cinematographer, Tyson Perkins, plays with focus. The foreground and background shift at times to create a sense of disorientation. And Sherree Philips’ production design is understated and effective.

Jack and Jill rarely interact with other people, as the film stays focused on the pair in that lonely house. But Sarah Peirse makes a strong impact in a small role as Elizabeth’s sister, whose manner suggests severe judgment, and whose conversations with Jack reveal that anyone close to Elizabeth ended up in pain. When both Jack and Jill appear with bruises on their bodies, we understand that Elizabeth had been physically abusive as well as manipulative.

Near the end, the film does turn toward genre horror, with a single jump scare and a suspenseful conclusion. Went Up a Hill is, after all, a ghost story, but one shaped in a fresh and artful way by a director who, in his second film, already has the control of a master.

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‘Went Up the Hill’ Review: Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery Are Chilling in Shadowy, Creepy Ghost Story

TIFF 2024: Director Samuel Van Grinsven’s movie is spooky but steers clear of any horror movie tropes

In the old nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. In the Samuel Van Grinsven drama “Went Up the Hill,” characters named Jack and Jill have their own business on that hill, and it does involve water, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.  (That said, the next lines of the old English nursery rhyme – “Jack fell down and broke his crown / And Jill came tumbling after” – do give you the sense that nobody comes out unscathed in any telling of this particular story).

The movie called “Went Up the Hill,” which had its world premiere on Thursday during the opening night of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is a ghost story with roots in children’s doggerel, a tale of possession that runs on mood, not scares. The second feature from the New Zealand-born director Van Grinsven, the film is ferociously atmospheric, exquisitely creepy and languid to the point of obsession.

It’s spooky, to be sure, and full of often malignant spirits, but it steers well clear of any horror movie tropes. Instead, it’s a disquieting study of three damaged people played by two gifted actors who each get to play a character and a half.

In this case, Jack and Jill are Dacre Montgomery (“Stranger Things”) and Vicky Krieps (“The Phantom Thread,” “Corsage”). Jill is the widow of an artist named Elizabeth who has taken her own life by walking into a frigid lake with rocks in her pockets; Jack is her son from a previous relationship, little known by Jill or most others in Elizabeth’s life. They meet at a memorial service in Elizabeth’s dramatic hillside house, modern on the inside but  blending into the mountain from the outside.

The story is told in bits and fragments, in teasing suggestions of past events and in dramatic images: Jill in the shower, water running down shoulder blades sharp enough to earn that word blades ; characters reflected in the glass of a black-and-white etching hanging on the wall; ominous vistas of a frozen lake in the snowy environs of New Zealand’s South Island.

That remote landscape is a character of its own, due in large part to sound designer Robert Mackenzie. Throughout the film, the sounds of nature have an undercurrent of violence and menace, between the moaning of the wind and the rumblings of the mountains.

Within the relative refuge of the house, Jill sleeps in a mattress on the floor of the room that also contains Elizabeth’s coffin – and in the middle of the first night that she and Jack spend there, she gets up, goes to Jack and tells him that she’s his mother. “They took you from me,” says Jill-as-Elizabeth.

Krieps’ features, usually sharp and angular, have seemingly softened and rounded as she morphs into Elizabeth for the night. Then in the morning, she tells Jack that Elizabeth spoke to him through her, and “she has more to tell you tonight.”

But this isn’t so simple as Elizabeth possessing Jill to speak to her long-lost son every night. Elizabeth, it seems, also possesses Jack in order to speak to Jill, giving their interactions a shifting, evanescent dynamic as each actor shifts in and out of different characters and different roles within those characters.

The nightly possessions bring conflict but also shocking intimacy; when Jack and Jill, or whatever characters they happen to be at the moment, have sex, it plays out with almost architectural precision. Montgomery and Krieps do virtuoso jobs of sliding back and forth between Jack and Jill and various versions of Elizabeth – with everybody, alive or dead, looking for some kind of satisfaction or release that is nearly impossible to find.

During daylight hours, when Elizabeth isn’t making her appearances, Jack gets some information from his aunt, Helen (Sara Peirse), who talks of the abuse he suffered as a boy at the hands of Elizabeth. “Whatever you thought you would find here,” she says, “it doesn’t exist.” 

Jill insists that there was love in these relationships, and that they can hang onto it, but things spiral into increasing shades of madness and mania – although while the film can get emotionally overwrought, it’s a curiously restrained style of overwrought, a spooky game of who’s who.

Along with the unsettling sounds of nature, Hanan Townshend’s music is long on voices delivering a breathy pulse, and an insistent itch that suggests that things are not OK. Tyson Perkins’ cinematography, meanwhile, is stunningly beautiful but also terrifying.

“Went Up the Hill”  is passionate and dark but also stubbornly elusive and illusive; it may get its title from a plainspoken nursery rhyme, but this is a movie that takes place in the shadows, both visually and narratively.

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