Unorthodox stories of the afterlife seem to offer a great deal of potential for exploring fundamental ideas about what it means to be alive: when faced with disruptions to what we know, or think we know, or believe in, we’re encouraged to think differently, or given a new focus on what’s important. A Ghost Waits (2020), in some respects, reminds me of the classic alternative afterlife movie Beetlejuice (1988) with its after-death bureaucracy and perplexing guidance for hauntings; to an extent, there’s something of The Lovely Bones in there too, a story which equips its heaven with an ‘intake counsellor’ to help people settle in and yet also makes its heaven a frustrating, even sometimes alienating place. Yet for all of these comparisons, A Ghost Waits manages to feel entirely original. Yes, it introduces its own unorthodox afterlife into its narrative, but it does it with a gentle charm and a pitch-perfect interplay between the living and the dead; the resulting film is both humorous and deeply moving.
MacLeod Andrews plays Jack: Jack works on behalf of a rental company as a fixer-upper, going into properties after the tenants have left to make sure the electrics work, the fixtures and fittings are intact – that sort of thing. One house in particular seems to have a strangely high turnover of tenants, and we’re made privy to the fact that this is because the house is haunted. Unawares of this, Jack finds himself with nowhere to go during this job and so winds up staying over at the now-empty house, even though he’s technically not supposed to. But everywhere he turns, his supposed friends ‘can’t help’ (something which provides the film with one of its most organic yet bittersweet scenes when Jack calls a friend to ask for a place to stay; she turns him down flat, but ends their phone conversation by glibly repeating ‘if I can do anything for you, just ask!’) So Jack is stuck in the house until the job’s done. He waits around a lot in the evenings. He twiddles his thumbs. He plays on a guitar that the tenants left behind, wondering out loud why in hell they left so much of their stuff.
Perhaps Jack’s sense of detachment from the land of the living prepares him for what follows; he begins firstly to hear voices, and then to dream that he’s actually sleeping in one of the beds upstairs, rather than his good old sleeping-bag. Eventually, he sees something manifest in the house. This is ‘spectral agent’ Muriel (Natalie Walker) – not a ‘ghost’, never a ‘ghost’ – and she’s employed here too, though they seem at cross purposes. It’s her job to drive away the living. Why? It’s just what spectral agents do. Gradually, these two come to understand one another better; Jack’s lack of fear enables Muriel to begin exploring human emotions once more, and come to that, she allows Jack to move on from his deeply-entrenched loneliness. But there are issues at hand; there are other powers at work behind the scenes which decree that Jack must be scared away. Muriel has to navigate these, as well as defend her place in the house she loves.
A Ghost Waits absolutely thrives on its performances and its script, which is balanced with improv and moves seamlessly from very naturally and plausibly funny to equally naturally, plausibly sad. Whilst Andrews plays his role absolutely convincingly as a kind of ‘everyman’ character; clever, witty but stranded in an indifferent modern world, Walker is at first appropriately stagey and dispassionate; she grows back into a woman with human emotions and her own kind of sadness as the film progresses. These two are but rarely in the same shot (actually, Andrews carries almost the entirety of the shots with ease) but nonetheless, the film engenders a sweet developing relationship between them; other character additions add layers of humour in their own right, but the film belongs to the two leads and how they each change, given their new awareness of each other. The film being in black and white – well, that works, too, though it’s harder to define why; perhaps it adds gravitas and a sense of a story bigger than the sum of its parts, but also adds a nice contrast to the normal, suburban setting we find ourselves in.
I absolutely understand that one of the plot points in the film’s ending isn’t for everyone, and I spoke to some people after the screening who felt absolutely flattened by it; I wouldn’t dream of correcting or commenting on that outlook, and I can completely understand why it is not for everyone. For me, the conclusion gets a pass because the film itself is a fantasy, albeit one with a great deal of the real at its heart. It extends this fantasy at its close, but does so to offer a kind of redemption to characters which it has encouraged us to invest in.
Overall, the film’s great energy and ability to weave something new out of pre-existing motifs more than sustains it for me. A Ghost Waits is a clever, harmonious and darkly funny film, an oddly but genuinely heartwarming story which deserves to be seen. For a directorial debut, this is an incredible piece of work.
A Ghost Waits premiered at Glasgow FrightFest on Friday 6th March, 2020.