Based on the premise alone, A Ghost Story, the new film from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Pete’s Dragon director David Lowery, sounds kind of…silly? Or at least the image of Casey Affleck wearing a literal sheet over his head like one of the kids in It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown sounds silly. But our film editor A.A. Dowd saw A Ghost Story at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and calls the film “a sneakily ambitious meditation on life after death, the endurance of romantic connection, and the value we place on the spaces we occupy.”
Affleck stars as a man known only as C, who comes back to haunt the home he used to share with his widow, M (Rooney Mara), after his untimely and sudden death. Unable to communicate with his beloved, C watches helplessly as M grieves and eventually moves on, while he is stuck in both place and time. Then, as a press release from distributor A24 puts it, “the ghost embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life’s ineffable questions and the enormity of existence.”
A Ghost Story debuts in limited release on July 7, 2017.