We Have a Ghost
There’s fun to be had in Netflix’s spectral romp, but genuine scares and believable characters would have reaped dividends.
Spirited away: Jahi Winston, Isabella Russo and David Harbour
There’s been a bunch of haunted house films of late, but none quite like this Netflix romp. It starts promisingly enough, with a static shot of a Chicago abode in front of a massive moon. Then there are the screams, and a family exits, piling into their car before screeching out of shot (on the left). Still the camera doesn’t move, even when a caption announces One Year Later and the house attains a run-down, overgrown aspect – before our very eyes. Then another car pulls into shot (from the right), and the Presley family emerges, made up of Frank and Melanie (Anthony Mackie and Erica Ash) and their son Fulton (Niles Fitch). The estate agent is waiting and even though the price is cheap (it’s a “fixer-upper”) and full of “old world charm,” Melanie has her reservations: “Nothing, like, bad happened here, right?” she asks. The estate agent scoffs uneasily, adding, “oh my gosh, no, it’s just a buyer’s market.” But Frank remembers what the Presleys experienced in Houston and is willing to settle on anything to spare the family’s diminished coffers.
However, there’s another Presley, young Kevin (Jahi Winston), and he’s still in the car glued to bluetooth. At his father’s behest, he reluctantly struts up to the house and starts to explore. Yep, in the word of his brother Fulton, “it’s a dump.” Cut to the removal lorry and as the slow process of habitation begins, Kevin is in bed when he hears footsteps above his head. Curious to a fault, he ascends to the attic, a spooky place, where he is confronted by David Harbour in the form of Ernest, a transparent entity with an even spookier comb-over. Ernest performs his obligatory groans and hand waving at which Kevin, who switches from torch mode to record on his iPhone, bursts into laughter. Appalled, Ernest vanishes as fast as he appeared. And, you know, once something is recorded on a smart phone, there’s no way it’s going to stay private…
Unlike other ghosts in the cinematic pantheon, Ernest is different in that he is an apparition with amnesia, and so We Have a Ghost develops a Beetlejuice vibe (Tim Burton’s classic is even name-checked). If the film had stayed in this gear – which it achieves with some aplomb – Netflix might have had something to celebrate. But the writer-director Christopher Landon is in an ambitious frame of mind and as the film takes the mandatory digs at social media and shadowy government departments, the film rolls on in a variety of directions. It is all very Netflix, taking its tonal cues from Stranger Things and Sex Education, throwing in every generic curve it can accommodate in 125 minutes. The result is a movie that fails to work in any of the capacities it attempts, from its teen cred to awkward attempts at psychological insights into parenting. There are two or three laugh-out-loud moments, but the overall effect is overblown, with a handful of stereotypes too many. And when one learns that it is based on a short story – Geoff Manaugh’s ‘Ernest’ – it becomes apparent that the brevity got lost in the translation.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: David Harbour, Jahi Winston, Tig Notaro, Erica Ash, Jennifer Coolidge, Anthony Mackie, Faith Ford, Niles Fitch, Isabella Russo, Steve Coulter, Jo-Ann Robinson, Tom Bower.
Dir Christopher Landon, Pro Marty Bowen and Dan Halsted, Screenplay Christopher Landon, Ph Marc Spicer, Pro Des Jennifer Spence, Ed Ben Baudhuin, Music Bear McCreary, Costumes Whitney Anne Adams.
Temple Hill Entertainment/Halsted Pictures-Netflix.
125 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 24 February 2023. Cert. 12.
