If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to die, become a ghost, and then be condemned to silently watch people cry in wide shots for eternity, A Ghost Story is here to give you that exact experience—without the courtesy of actual death. Directed by David Lowery and starring Casey Affleck as a literal bedsheet, this 2017 film has the unique distinction of being less scary than a toddler’s Halloween costume and somehow more emotionally detached than a TED Talk about drywall.
Let’s start with the plot—or rather, the vague poetic premise desperately dressed up as meaning. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara play a couple with the chemistry of two wet tea towels. They live in a creaky old house. He dies in a car accident. She mourns by baking and then consuming an entire pie in a single, unbroken five-minute take—something that’s either brave acting or a hate crime against pacing. Affleck returns as a ghost. And by “ghost,” I mean a dude under a bedsheet with two eye holes cut out like a last-minute spirit at a sad fraternity party.
What happens next is… nothing. That’s the movie. He stands. He watches. Time passes. People come and go. At one point, he stares at a wall so long I thought my screen had frozen. But no. This is A Ghost Story—a film that dares to ask, “What if the afterlife were actually just indie cinema?” and then answers it with 92 minutes of extended, whispered nothingness.
The film is shot in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio with rounded edges, because of course it is. This is the universal sign of “I’m About To Experience Art,” typically used by filmmakers who think color correction and crop factor can substitute for a script. It’s not moody. It’s not atmospheric. It’s just claustrophobic. If you’re going to bore me, at least use the full width of the screen.
Casey Affleck’s performance as the ghost is impressive if you admire people for standing still. He spends most of the film loitering like a depressed sheet in a community theater version of Waiting for Godot. Occasionally he tilts his head, which I assume is the ghost version of emoting. When new tenants move in, he knocks over a few plates in protest—finally, some action!—and then immediately goes back to sulking silently like the world’s most passive-aggressive Casper.
Rooney Mara, meanwhile, is stuck doing what Rooney Mara does best: emoting grief by staring into the distance like she’s lost in a particularly traumatic IKEA memory. Her infamous pie scene is the film’s emotional centerpiece, and yes, it’s as awkward as advertised. She eats. And eats. And eats. You want to comfort her, but mostly you just want to yell, “Cut!” There’s realism, and then there’s watching a woman inhale a pastry like it owes her rent while a ghost watches from the hallway. It’s a scene so long and so uncomfortable that it circles back around to comedy, then back again to tedium, then into the metaphysical plane of “Why am I watching this?”
Lowery isn’t interested in traditional storytelling. He’s interested in time. Memory. Loss. The cosmic echo chamber of existence. Which is a fancy way of saying: this movie is about as much fun as reading your own tombstone in slow motion. Yes, the film is about grief—but so is every country music song, and at least those come with a melody and an end point. A Ghost Story wants to transcend time. What it does is test your ability to not throw your remote.
There’s a subplot—if you can call it that—where the ghost watches the house change hands. A Spanish-speaking family moves in. Then some young people throw a party, and one of them gives a five-minute monologue about the meaninglessness of life that sounds like it was lifted directly from a Philosophy 101 dropout’s diary. This monologue, by the way, is the loudest piece of dialogue in the movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone whispering for an hour and then suddenly yelling, “Entropy is inevitable!” like they’re about to drop an EDM beat.
Then there’s time travel. Yes, this movie that’s mostly about standing quietly throws in a completely unearned trip through centuries. Suddenly our ghost is watching settlers build a house. Then he’s in the distant future in a skyscraper. Then he’s back in the same house again, like Doctor Who if the TARDIS was a box of sadness and the Doctor never said anything.
Eventually—and I promise this is not a joke—the ghost folds in on himself and disappears. That’s the big finale. The sheet is gone. And we, the viewers, are finally free. It’s supposed to be profound, like the letting go of all earthly attachments. But it feels more like the movie got bored of itself and finally decided to put itself out of its misery.
To be fair, there are moments of beauty. The score by Daniel Hart is genuinely haunting, and some shots are indeed painterly. But it’s like putting perfume on a nap: pleasant, sure, but why are you doing this?
Final Verdict?
A Ghost Story is less a film than a sustained emotional sigh. It’s the kind of movie where people whisper, “You just don’t get it,” because they’re too embarrassed to admit they watched a grown man mope under a sheet for 90 minutes and felt nothing. It’s slow. It’s pretentious. It’s a cinematic screensaver with delusions of grandeur. Watch it if you’re trying to impress someone at a vegan potluck or if you’ve recently lost a bet. Everyone else? Fold up that sheet and find something with actual ghosts. Preferably ones that say more than boo.