‘A Ghost Story’ On Amazon Prime Video: This Daring, Divisive Movie Is Worth Your Time

You’ve probably heard one of a few things about A Ghost Story; Rooney Mara eats an entire pie in a scene that caused people to walk out of the theater, Casey Affleck wears a sheet, and yeah, it’s not a horror movie. (And if you’re holding off because you aren’t on the Affleck train (don’t worry, I’m not either), put these fears aside – because he really is under a sheet for most of the movie.) What A Ghost Story is is wholly original, something that rarely comes our way and takes our breath away when it does. It’s uncomfortable and mesmerizing all at once, taking every expectation you might have and throwing them out the window.

David Lowery‘s film operates on a fairly simple premise; Affleck and Mara star as C and M, a pretty average couple living in a ranch house that M is not particularly fond of. Things are largely normal until C is killed one day in a car accident right outside their home, and he returns to haunt the house in a bed sheet with eye holes cut out of it. You might think you know what’s going to happen from here – C will spend his days watching over M, a melancholy presence as she grieves and binge-eats pie and eventually moves on – but you’re wrong. Instead, the film takes quite the turn, making cosmic commentary on the magnitude of existence and just how little of it we understand.

This isn’t a film particularly anchored by its performances, but rather its messages. You may very well find yourself turned off from the opening sequence, because Lowery wastes no time in establishing the film’s tone and pacing, and it’s certainly not for everyone. A Ghost Story moves so deliberately slowly it almost feels stagnant, but it’s evidently meaningful – because life is made up of these extended moments, in the little gasps and touches and movements that cinema so frequently overlooks. While it could have easily become pretentious mush, it remains strangely sincere, a grounded and compelling experience that keeps you hooked even with minimal dialogue. The imagery says more than words ever could, and that’s what makes the film such a unique experience.

It makes perfect sense that A Ghost Story is so divisive; many people don’t watch movies to face their own mortality and impermanence – they watch movies to escape. But for all the all the meditations on life and legacy that A Ghost Story gives us, it also presents something unflinchingly human, a feeling that lies within all of us that we’re a little too scared to unearth. It’s a powerful, bold film, hypnotic and jarring in all of its declarations and ruminations. You may not feel as though you “get” everything by the end of it, and you don’t have to – because A Ghost Story is more about the questions it poses than it is about the answers.

Stream A Ghost Story on Prime Video