Mark Reviews Movies: WE HAVE A GHOST

We Have a Ghost, Netflix

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | February 24, 2023

We Have a Ghost takes one simple idea—of a house haunted by a ghost—and twists it in a different way. After that, writer/director Christopher Landon keeps twisting and turning this new idea until we're never quite certain what we can or should expect out of this story. It's fun and clever and surprisingly touching, and regardless of whatever formulaic touches might be at the foundation of this story, those other qualities are far more important.

It all starts like a fairly typical horror tale, although Landon's decision to shoot some apparently terrifying scene from across the street of the haunted house in a single take adds a literal sense of distance to the proceedings. Whatever happens in this house to scare away a family from it for good is something we start to anticipate.

About a year later, a new family moves into this Chicago-area house, with its lawn now overgrown, its exterior showing a lot of wear, and the interior in need of a good and deep cleaning. They're the Presley family, made up of father Frank (Anthony Mackie) and mother Melanie (Erica Ash), as well as the couple's two teenage sons Fulton (Niles Fitch) and Kevin (Jahi Winston). The second, younger kid is a bit of a loner, spending his time listening to classic rock or playing one of his guitars or generally moping about wherever he is.

One of the admirable elements of Landon's screenplay, adapted from a short story by Geoff Manaugh, is how little time it wastes getting to the point of its characters and the setup in general. Dad's tendency to become involved in get-rich-quick schemes means the family has had to move a lot, and that has caused a schism between him and his younger son.

While lying in bed and contemplating how sad and lonely his life is, Kevin hears something—or someone—moving around in the attic. Upon investigating, the teen is surprised to see a ghostly figure appear, illuminated by some yellow aura, able to pass through solid objects, and moaning and groaning in a desperate attempt to scare the stranger. Kevin, recording the encounter on his phone, starts laughing.

This is a comedy, of course, but just as Landon's cuts to the chase of what the story is and what the tone of it will be, the filmmaker also gives us an immediate idea of how unexpectedly sincere this tale of a boy and a ghost, as well as his family and a neighbor he likes and a world that catches a kind of phantom fever, can be. Kevin starts calling the ghost Ernest (David Harbour), because that's the name embroidered on the bowling shirt he wears, and he seems an earnest sort, indeed. The ghost cannot speak, except in those otherworldly wails, and he has no memory of how he died, when it happened, or what circumstances led him to haunt this house. He's alone, too, and in Ernest, Kevin finds a kindred spirit of a literal variety.

The core of that carries through as the rest of the family learns about Ernest, Frank decides that publicizing the ghost's existence online is a get-rich-quick plan that can't fail, Kevin strikes up a friendship with a fellow lonely teenager named Joy (Isabella Russo), and the house becomes overrun with fans, reporters, and others with various motives and intentions for the ghost. A lot of this is quite amusing, such a montage that shows how Ernest's online celebrity makes him a sex symbol and the inspiration for challenges like trying to run through a wall, and while Landon keeps adding elements that might at first seem overwhelming to the simple premise, they pay off or at least maintain the consistency of the plot and tone.

One of those is Dr. Leslie Monroe (Tig Notaro), who once ran a program looking for ghosts for the CIA and now has to figure out a way to detain an actual one. While that generally predictable subplot is more or less an excuse for Kevin and Ernest and Joy to be chased by various authorities, the action here is inventive in how the ghost can evade being caught and use his physical transparency pass through moving vehicles at will.

All of this, of course, happens because Kevin wants to help Ernest find out who he was in life, how he died, and what might be preventing him from passing on to whatever's next. It's about as good an excuse as any for the story to transform into a road trip, with Kevin and Joy becoming closer along the way, as Ernest tries to help his still-living friend as the teen is helping him.

The surprise, perhaps, is not in what we think we learn about Ernest, what we actually discover about him, or how Landon takes these plot machinations to once again twist the story into a thriller during the climax. What is a shock is how the filmmaker uses these revelations to give us a pair of sincere and moving scenes—one between a father and a son and another that can't be described without giving away too much, although it does reflect how much sympathy Harbour elicits in his wordless performance (The rest of the cast is quite good, too, at adding some layers to characters who aren't merely caught up in the plotting).

There's a good amount of inventiveness to the way We Have a Ghost keeps re-defining what it sets out to do. The consistency, though, is in the film's heart, which never wavers.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products