Film review: A Ghost Story (12A)

Written and directed by David Lowery it is a melancholic story about grief, told from the point of view of a ghost trapped in a single space yet unmoored in time. Essentially a metaphysical horror movie, it’s low on traditional scares, but big on atmosphere, something intensified by how weird it all is. The ghost in question, for instance, looks like the cheapest Halloween costume imaginable, a guy in a white sheet with two eyeholes cut from it. The person under the sheet is Casey Affleck. He doesn’t start off this way. As the film opens we see fragments of his and Rooney Mara’s slightly bohemian life together.

They’re a married couple who seem deeply in love, though it’s clear from the snatches of conversation we do get that there’s some tension between them. Early in the film the camera drifts over the scene of a road accident that has left Affleck’s character dead behind the wheel of his car. This is pretty much the last time we see his face. The next time we see his body it’s in the morgue, awaiting formal identification. Once Mara’s character leaves, we see his sheet-covered body sit up, the white material taking shape around him as he drifts through corridors unseen, eventually ending up back in his home, where he keeps watch over his grieving wife.