Sometimes you watch a movie and think, “This must have been terrifying on paper.” Then you realize—no—it was probably boring on paper too. Ghost Story is the cinematic equivalent of a long, rambling dinner anecdote told by someone who keeps forgetting the point but refuses to stop talking because, darn it, they wore their best cardigan for the occasion.
The Chowder Society: Now with 100% More Ennui
Our tale begins in the snowy New England town of Milburn, where four old men—Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman—gather by the fire to drink brandy, puff cigars, and tell spooky tales. It’s like Are You Afraid of the Dark?, except instead of plucky teenagers, it’s a collection of geriatrics wondering aloud if their scotch is too watered down.
When Edward Wanderley’s son David plummets out a high-rise window after his girlfriend turns into a corpse mid-makeout (we’ve all been there), the old boys start to panic. Soon Edward himself sees a ghost, staggers to a bridge, and promptly swan-dives into the afterlife. This is less “mysterious haunting” and more “Final Destination: Retirement Home Edition.”
The Woman in the Photograph
Enter Craig Wasson pulling double duty as the surviving Wanderley son Don and the dearly departed David. He spins a yarn about a sexy secretary named Alma who is cold to the touch—literally—and ruins his life before hopping into bed with his brother. Don then reveals a decades-old photo of Alma looking exactly the same, because ghosts in this universe apparently age like Tupperware.
At this point, the surviving elders confess their shameful secret: Back in 1929, they accidentally killed a flirt named Eva Galli, stuffed her in her car, and pushed it into a lake. Except she wasn’t dead—she just hadn’t finished her martini. She drowned anyway, and instead of seeking justice, she opted for the long game: haunting them fifty years later in a series of chilly jump scares and awkward seductions.
The Haunting… and the Yawning
Director John Irvin does his best to conjure tension, but most of the scares are Alice Krige staring at people until they have a heart attack. To be fair, Krige is mesmerizing—but even she can’t save a script where the primary ghost tactic is to occasionally appear in a snowstorm and look vaguely peeved.
The film’s “action” sequences involve things like:
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Falling through old floorboards.
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Slowly driving in the snow.
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Staring at a photograph for a suspiciously long time.
It’s like the ghost’s evil plan was choreographed by the DMV.
Star Power, Low Voltage
This was the swan song for Astaire and Fairbanks Jr., and frankly, they deserved better. Watching legends of Hollywood’s golden age react to phantoms with the mild annoyance of someone whose newspaper delivery is late feels almost cruel. Melvyn Douglas looks perpetually confused, possibly because the script changes tone every ten minutes. And John Houseman, bless him, delivers every line as though he’s narrating an insurance commercial.
Craig Wasson spends most of the movie either limping or looking bewildered—though to be fair, that may just be method acting for a man trapped in a plot this clunky.
The Climax: A Wet Letdown
The “big” finale involves dredging up Eva’s car from the lake while Don faces her rotting specter in the old Galli house. The two climaxes are cross-cut together in a way that’s meant to be suspenseful but mostly feels like someone flipping channels between Columbo and Scooby-Doo. When they finally pop the car open and Eva’s corpse flops out like a wet Halloween prop, the curse is somehow broken. Don lives, the town is safe, and audiences are left wondering why the ghost didn’t just start with this fifty years ago and save everyone a lot of trouble.
Final Verdict
Ghost Story wants to be a prestige horror film—a chilling blend of Straub’s gothic novel and star-studded gravitas. What it delivers instead is a meandering, frostbitten slog where the scares are tepid and the pacing is positively glacial. Yes, it’s pretty to look at, and yes, Alice Krige could haunt my dreams anytime, but even she can’t rescue a story that feels like it was told to you by your grandpa while he kept forgetting the names of the characters.
Cast Fred Astaire as Ricky Hawthorne Tim Choate as Young Hawthorne Melvyn Douglas as Dr. John Jaffrey Mark Chamberlin as Young Jaffrey Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Edward Charles Wanderley Kurt Johnson as Young Wanderley John Houseman as Sears James Ken Olin as Young James Craig Wasson as Don & David Wanderley Patricia Neal as Stella Hawthorne Alice Krige as Eva Galli / Alma Mobley Jacqueline Brookes as Milly Jaffrey Miguel Fernandes as Gregory Bate Lance Holcomb as Fenny Bate Brad Sullivan as Sheriff Hardesty Michael O’Neill as Churchill Guy Boyd as Omar Norris Robin Curtis as Rea Dedham James Greene as Mailman
