The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Review of “A Ghost Story”

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

Haunted: Film Review of A Ghost Story

By Geoff Carter

Sometimes, despite the best efforts of The Pen in Hand to stay hip and current, we find ourselves hopelessly behind the times. The other night as I was surfing through Max (HBO 2.0), I ran across a fascinating little film called A Ghost Story. In my inveterate but sometimes charming cluelessness, I thought it was a recent release, but I soon discovered it came out in 2017—pre-Covid. Despite my temporal challenges—and because this film strays far off the beaten track—I decided to review it anyway, leaving the newest Marvel superhero CGI blockbuster for another day. 

Ghost stories and horror movies have come a long way since the days of Dracula, Frankenstein, Creature of the Black Lagoon, and The Wolfman. Recent films like The Witch, Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Babadook delve into realms beyond formula slasher narratives and the cheap thrills of shock schlock. These recent offerings focus more deeply on the complexities of the unknown, the unknowable, and the inner workings of terror in our collective psyches.

A Ghost Story starts out as a tale of a young couple living in a small run-down ranch home. We see the wife (Rooney Mara, credited as M) searching the internet for new homes on the market while her husband (Casey Affleck, credited as C) works at home as a composer. There seems to be some friction between the two over staying in the home. Apparently, she wants to move but C feels compelled to stay. After he is killed in an auto accident, he—or presumably his spirit—rises from the morgue slab and, wearing the sheet with which he was covered, our hero starts on his way home. 

The fact he wears a sheet complete with eyeholes, like a young child’s Halloween costume, is a bold conceit and should by all rights be ridiculous—and hilarious—but it’s not.  The tone of the film dictates that this is a serious conceit, a calculated haunting. In one scene, as the ghost stands in a corner and watches, his wife comes home and, finding a pie on the table, proceeds to eat it. At first, she eats standing at the table, lifting forkfuls into her mouth. After a few minutes, she sits on the floor and continues eating while the ghost stands nearby, watching and presumably helpless. It is a scene of modulated and intense grief. She eats until she pukes, unable to stomach any of it.

To say the pacing is deliberate is a mammoth understatement. At times, the camera will hold a long shot for a minute or more, giving the narrative a sense of inevitability—and foreboding. The pie-eating scene holds a static shot for at least two minutes. Scenes where the ghost stands at the window looking out or watching her sleeping seem interminable. Even though a door opened briefly while he was leaving the hospital, a door he did not enter, he is stuck. He cannot join the living, he cannot communicate, and he cannot leave the house, not even to follow his wife when she moves out. 

C stays and watches as a young family moves in. Unable to bear their presence, he does a poltergeist, smashing dishes and frightening them away. Others move in. He listens in as a graduate student pontificates on the vastness of the universe, the insignificance of humanity, and the immortality of art. 

The house is demolished and replaced by a huge skyscraper. He stays. Later, he dives off the building, inexplicably transporting himself back to a time when the foundation of the house was first laid out by a westward pioneer. He waits, watches, and finally sees himself and his wife move into the house. It’s easy to see that his younger self is drawn to the house, that something in it pulls at him. 

As the couple moves in, and because C, apparently in a time loop watching his younger self, witnesses moments from his own life happening to his younger self. For the viewer, moments from earlier in the movie, as when they are awakened by a banging on the piano is shown to have been caused by C’s spirit. He finished the spiral from his death to haunting M and his past self, closing the circle of the time loop that has become his existence.

This movie featuring a ghost wearing a sheet with eyes—which by most metrics should be ridiculous—is surprisingly touching and heartfelt. After C dies, he spends the majority of his time observing and waiting, unable to do anything to help M or to even contact her. He watches her leave forever, helpless to follow. He lashes out at the young family who eventually move in after she leaves, but mostly waits. C does see another ghost standing in the window of the neighboring house. They communicate (via subtitles), exchanging hellos but little more. The neighbor says he/she is waiting. When his/her home is finally razed, it says I guess they’re not coming and disappears, implying that the spirits’ presence on Earth haunting their former homes is voluntary. They are refusing to let go. C waits and even returns through the time cycle to find closure with M. 

A Ghost Story is a superbly understated and subtle film that addresses issues of loss, closure, love, grief, and even the nature of existence itself. Through a gesture from M, C is able to find peace with himself and move on to the next step, but only after waiting, hoping, and grieving through an impossibly indeterminate amount of time. 

The story is deceptively simple but resonates through Lowery’s minimalist execution. The sometimes maddeningly static shots, the deliberate pace, and the appearance of C as a spirit combine to create a calculated portrait of the anguish of a lost soul. Even C’s appearance lends to the somber tone. His blacked-in ghost eyes eventually seem to register sadness, frustration, and loneliness, an impression bolstered by his posture. 

This is not an especially entertaining or exciting film, but for anyone who has suffered a loss of a loved one or the ending of a relationship, its emotional timber resonates deeply and profoundly. This ghost story is not spooky or horrifying or ghastly. Instead, it addresses the momentary flash of our lives limned against the vast darkness of time and the universe. It is, in the end, an inevitable and beautiful rendering of the all-too-short brilliance of life.