Having started this Substack over a year ago, and recently moving to yet another place that sits right next to a cinema, I thought that it was about time to post a more traditional review (Ah, just like old times). And what better movie to pick for the spookiest month of the year…

…than a cut and dry drama about a local theatre production in Chicago (Look, at least it has “ghost” in the title).

Kelly O’ Sullivan and Alex Thompson return off the success of their 2019 film, Saint Frances, to collaborate once more on Ghostlight. A father and construction worker, Dan (Keith Kupferer) struggles to keep his head above water as he deals with a brash and antisocial teenage daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), a fed up spouse (Tara Mallen) and the egregious fees from pursuing a lawsuit we don’t get the full details of until much later on. But his rage reaches a boiling point when he assaults a sports car revving douche for nearly running him over, and when his co-worker captures the whole thing on his phone (albeit regretfully), Dan’s left almost certainly out of a job. However, when local theatre actor, Rita (Triangle of Sadness' Dolly De Leon) catches a glimpse of his pure emotion from across the street, she implores him to take part in a community theatre production of Romeo and Juliet in a desperate bid to replace one of their dropouts.

O’ Sullivan’s story seems to be a more overt love letter to dramaturgy, borrowing heavily from her time in the theatre. This extends to her casting of the three leads, who are not only long time collaborators onstage, but a legitimate family of thespians. It seems natural that a wife and husband theatre duo and their daughter, who was literally born in a theatre, should be the ones to play this bickering family of three. And while they live up to their parts, I fear the direction flattened their range to one of two emotions: reserved or explosive. All three actors were worried about transitioning to the big screen, believing that they would struggle with the screenplay format and the edited world of performing in front of a camera, but found O’ Sullivan’s script and dialogue fit right at home on stage. As an actor, that’s great, but as an audience member, I couldn’t help but wonder if the dialogue, lacking in any form of subtext or tact, held me back from enjoying it. You can tell its bad when De Leon, who was a surprise gem in Triangle and a natural in front of a camera , was probably the weakest performance. Don’t get me wrong, Rita is fun and her weakness as a character has everything to do with the cookie-cutter role of ‘tired veteran’ she’s given. Nevertheless, ** conversations, tears and group hugs would always feel slightly soapy in execution, as everyone seemed to say exactly how they felt, even in moments of suppressed emotion. That’s not surprising, given that the film runs on the logic of a local stage production. Characters even repeat the same advice ad nauseam: on stage, it works to project emotions “for the people in the back.” Yet, when voices are mic’d up and amplified and performances are pulled into extreme focus, films like Ghostlight , at least to me, deserve a much quieter touch.

By extension, a director needs a more adept hand. You can’t rely on flat compositions and basic blocking, which is unfortunately the case for eighty to ninety percent of Ghostlight’s footage. School gyms are lit flatter than the deflated basketballs that tread on them, Daytime scenes look like they were shot on an iPhone (and not the Sean Baker kind with a kitted out rig either), while most emotional moments are either at a close up or establishing distance but are never in between. At least it didn’t look like a lifetime show, but that’s not a very high bar to clear for something that needed transcend a stage production.

I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon, as I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy myself. But every time it would suck me in with it’s funny coincidences and cute father daughter bonding, it would blind me with its stage lights and have the ushers dragging me back out by my ankles. The worst instance being that pesky lawsuit.

THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING, HEED IT NOW OR EXPERIENCE A TRAGEDY MOST FOUL.

Turns out Dan is essentially suing the family of his son’s girlfriend, who together with said son - pause for dramatic irony - committed a double suicide after not being able to see each other. Only, the girlfriend survived. So, Dan is convinced that the girlfriend drove him to do it. And it takes performing as Romeo (inhabiting a the mind of a character akin to his son), for him to forgive her and let go. As with most plays, this sounds on paper like the juiciest thematic twist, but in reality, feels like the thing in a first draft of a screenplay that you iron out to be just a little more plausible. For me, it literally would have made more sense for the girlfriend to be drink driving and surviving the crash, that way its similar enough to mirror Romeo and Juliet while still being different enough to feel a lot more grounded. It’s not lazy writing, but its one to one enough to definitely feel contrived.

It’s a lot of these same contrivances that really bring down the project for me, as you’ve got a template for a really special dramadey. They sting more than plot holes, because at least you can forgive a plot hole if everything else holds up. But contrivances, while they’re thematically relevant and sometimes necessary to keep a story’s momentum, always reek of the first and easiest option out of the possible beats a writer has listed out.

At the very least, the finale, much like the play itself, pulls its act together at the very last second, and while Dan’s sudden jump in stage proficiency is jarring. There are lavish costumes, moody lighting and tearjerking mise en scéne galore. The whole sequence where Dan performs Romeo’s final monologue as he catches visions of his son in wings, is stunningly realised. And while this continues when the family gets home in the gloomy hours of the night and the credits sneak their way in, its hard not to feel a little cheated. They held all of this beauty back for so long, it genuinely felt like they had just figured out how to make their stage production into a film.

But I do not want to end on a sour note. While I wasn’t blown away by the film itself, I had a great time watching this with an older crowd was a great. Everyone around me had a flurry of wonderful reactions, and shed a few tears at the end. It was hard not to get swept up alongside them. And if the players on the stage consider themselves a family, then I think, even if it’s just for a brief moment, the audience must be as well.