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A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story title card

Year - 2017
Studio - Sailor Bear, Zero Trans Fat Productions, Ideaman Studios
Stars - Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara
Director - David Lowery
Writing Credits - David Lowery
Music - Daniel Hart

Synopsis

A young married couple, "C" (Casey Affleck) and "M" (Rooney Mara), are preparing to move from their modest rural home. However, C, a musician, is reluctant to move away, citing their "history" there together. M has experienced many such moves throughout her life, and talks about secret messages she always hid in homes from which she left.

C is killed in an automobile accident just outside their home. As M leaves the morgue after visiting his body, his ghost rises up from under the morgue sheet, and returns to the home, invisible to all, but represented by a traditional sheet with holes cut for the eyes. (In description this may sound silly, but in presentation it is actually quite effective.)

A Ghost Story poster

C's ghost watches M's attempts to deal with her grief and eventual move from the house. The ghost continues to hang out there and, at one point, sees another sheet covered ghost in the adjoining house. Communicating wordlessly, the other ghost says that she (evidently female, as her sheet is flowered) is waiting for someone, but doesn't remember who.

The ghost's existence at the property spans hundreds of years in both forward and backward time. It witnesses various residents come and go, watches as the house is demolished, sees it built over as a skyscraper in a futuristic city, and is with an early pioneer family settling on the property, only to be killed by Indians.

The ghost observes M's final exit from the home, and it immediately goes to the spot where she had hidden a secret message. When it reads the message, the sheet collapses to the floor. (We don't see what the paper says, but its effect is that the ghost no longer exists.)

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