Line #40 Film/AGhostStory


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aghoststory_teaserposter.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine It's all about time.]]'']]
3
4	-> ''Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting.''
5	-->-- Creator/VirginiaWoolf, ''A Haunted House''
6
7	''A Ghost Story'' is a minimalist tragedy film directed by Creator/DavidLowery featuring Creator/CaseyAffleck and Creator/RooneyMara. It was released in 2017 and distributed by indie movie company Creator/{{A24}}.
8
9	The movie depicts a story of a deceased man who does not vanish completely but turns into a ghost. He haunts the house where he used to live with his wife and where she remains for some time. Later she departs, but he goes on haunting the house and the people who take up residence.
10	----
11	!! Tropes:
12
13	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: [[spoiler: The ghost lingers on until the small neighborhood he lived in has been thoroughly developed into a massive Mega City]].
14	* BedsheetGhost: C becomes a classic version. It's the sheet that covers his body in the morgue, though the origin of the eye-holes is not addressed. He sees another ghost who is covered by an actual bedsheet, judging by the print.
15	* BilingualBonus: The Hispanic mother speaks unsubtitled Spanish to her children.
16	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: There's no happy reunion, magical miracle or overt epiphany. C is just apparently ready to let go and move on]].
17	* BookEnds: Around the start of the film, C and M are awoken by a loud noise in the middle of the night. [[spoiler: At the very end of the movie, it's revealed that this was caused by C's own ghost sitting down on the piano]].
18	* TheCameo:
19	** Bonnie "Prince" Billy. He gives an atypically long monologue about how it's pointless to try to achieve any lasting impact on the world because everything is temporary, so you should just live for the moment.
20	** Also Music/{{Kesha}}.
21	* CentralTheme: The passage of time, life, love, loss, and essence of existence.
22	* ChekhovsGun: The note that M leaves in the wall after she moves out, which C spends much of the film trying to dig out. [[spoiler: We never find out what it says, but it allows him to move on into the next life]].
23	* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler: When the settler family gets attacked by natives, not even the children are spared]].
24	* DiesWideOpen: The aftermath of C's fatal car crash is shown. C is dead behind the wheel of his car, with his eyes open.
25	* ExistentialHorror: The film examines the existential horror of death. The Prognosticator argues that no matter what you do with your life, it will be forgotten and amount to nothing.
26	* {{Foreshadowing}}
27	** In the opening scene, M and C comment on the weird noises that the house makes. You can hear C's ghost scratching at the door panel while they lie on the couch.
28	** M mentions leaving notes in the houses she leaves and says she's never returned to any of them.
29	* GhostStory: And a minimalist one at that.
30	* HauntedHouse: The film starts with a passage about a haunted house. C becomes a haunting spirit when he starts throwing temper tantrums at the occupants of his house after M leaves.
31	* LeaveTheCameraRunning: Many of the film's early scenes are long and contemplative. This is particularly true of the first scenes in which C is a ghost. One scene notably includes over five minutes of M sorting through her mail and then silently eating a pie. As the film progresses, the {{Time Skip}}s become longer and longer, increasing the rate of time passage considerably.
32	* MegaCity: [[spoiler: The small town where the main character lives becomes one of these far in the future, with a giant corporate skyscraper being built on the site of his former home]].
33	* {{Minimalism}}: Most of the film consists of a bedsheet ghost wandering around a house and watching the people who live there. The plot is extremely understated and there is little dialogue. Almost the entirety of the story takes place in C and M's house.
34	* MoodWhiplash:
35	** The ghost is mostly quiet and behaves; however, at one point he is uncharacteristically aggressive towards the Hispanic family, throwing dishes on the floor like a poltergeist.
36	** After C and M peacefully cuddle in bed to fall asleep, the very next scene is C dead behind the wheel after a violent accident.
37	* NoNameGiven: For the rest of the people appearing apart from C and M.
38	* OnlyKnownByInitials: Main characters are only known as C and M.
39	* TheOner: The scene where the (former) wife of the ghost eats a pie which became the meme that many people mostly remember about this film.
40	* RealityHasNoSubtitles: The Spanish speaking family's dialogue is all unsubtitled. Subverted with the dialogue between ghosts, which is ''only'' in subtitles.
41	* SilenceIsGolden: The film uses dialogue sparsely, preferring to helm its gravitas on visual imagery.
42	* ThunderEqualsDownpour: Justified in this film. In one case it thunders and then it immediately starts to shower, which changes the mood of the scene.
43	* TimeSkip: Time frequently skips forward when C is a ghost. The time skipped becomes longer and longer as the film progresses. [[spoiler: It culminates in him skipping hundreds of years ''backwards'']].
44	* TrashTheSet: The house that C and M lived in gets torn about about two-thirds of the way through the film. The production was allowed to film in the house for free because it was about to be torn down anyway, and they simply filmed the demolition.
45	* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler: We never find out what's written on the note that M hides in the wall. WordOfGod says that the script doesn't specify it, and only actress Rooney Mara knows what she wrote; the note was destroyed when the house was torn down, and Affleck couldn't actually read it through the ghost mask.]]
46	* VomitDiscretionShot: M after devouring nearly an entire pie [[LeaveTheCameraRunning over five (mostly) uncut minutes.]]
47	* WeAllDieSomeday: Said by the character played by Bonnie "Prince" Billy in his very long monologue.
48	* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: Native Americans execute a pioneer family, three children included, by bow and arrow. C watches one of the daughters decay]].

Context Film / AGhostStory