Director: David Lowery
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 1.0
A man (Casey Affleck) lives with his wife (Rooney Mara) in their little house, but after he dies in what looks like the least violent car crash possible, he returns to the home as a ghost - white sheet, eye holes and all - and watches as she mourns, meets another fella, sells the home, and other people move in (Affleck harasses them by throwing dishes and making the lights flicker). Lowery is trying to make this some kind of mood piece about the after-life, which is fine and all, but he goes about it all wrong: the bed sheet looks silly (I kept waiting for the BOO!), many shots are held longer than necessary, like the one with Mara gobbling down a pie and then vomiting (duration-of-shot does not necessarily equal artistic power) and with the third act, he writes himself into a corner, having Casey-Ghost wander through a newly-designed corporate office, a farm and eventually back to his original home, with yet another ghost (!?) in the place with him (so the ghost transcends time ... all right, dude). Lowery gets Bonnie 'Prince' Billy to deliver a speech about life being meaningless, although I'm not sure he believes it or expects the audience to, either. Not many people have seen the 2010 film Finisterrae, but at least in that similar picture director Sergio Caballero kept the fun in with the surreal.
