Mark Reviews Movies: LIGHT FROM LIGHT

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2019

In Light from Light, it is possible that ghosts are real and that they can interact with the living. The questions of that possibility are what matter to writer/director Paul Harrill, who focuses on the living, as they struggle to find hope in anything before a potential afterlife.

The main players are paranormal investigator Shelia (Marin Ireland), grieving widower Richard (Jim Gaffigan), and Shelia's teenage son Owen (Josh Wiggins). Shelia is a single mother, working at a car rental place after leaving a team of ghost hunters. After a radio interview, a priest (played by David Cale) contacts her, hoping that she'll help Richard, who believes his dead wife's spirit might be occupying the house.

This may sound like the premise for a typical ghost or horror story. Aside from a sequence in which Shelia spends the night alone in the darkened domicile, though, Harrill doesn't even suggest that there's anything typical or scary about his intentions. Instead, the film is a quiet story about people in a state of constant uncertainty.

Richard doesn't know if the ghost is real or not, and more importantly, he doesn't even know why his wife would be haunting their home, considering the circumstances of her death—both in terms of the location and how she ended up in that situation in the first place. Owen, who will be graduating from high school soon, is friends with classmate Lucy (Atheena Frizzell), and even though the two like-like each other, he's afraid that any romance will end when she goes off to college and he, more than likely, stays where he is.

As for Shelia, she has never been certain about her supposedly supernatural gift of being connected to some spiritual plane of existence. It started as seemingly prescient dreams, and now, she seems to want to put that chapter of her life behind her. The riddle of Richard's house, with its flickering lights and moving keys, might provide some answers. If anything, she might be able to help someone in need.

Harrill subtly shifts the narrative and thematic purposes of Light from Light as Shelia's investigation continues. While it starts as a more literal kind of ghost tale, the film evolves its outlook as we start to learn about these characters—their fears and their hopes and their doubts. These are kinds of ghosts, too—to be confronted and conquered.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products