So, before diving into this review, I’d like to share with you what the experience was like in the movie theater, seeing "A Ghost Story". Bear with me. I went to the suburban movie theater down the street from my house with a few friends, with the spoken intent to write a review for this movie. Inside the dimly light theater was a collection of empty chairs, maybe 8 people scattered throughout the room. We took our seats in the third row from the back, and as the trailers crawled to a close, a group of seven kids sauntered into the darkened room, their voices with an up and down, cracking lilt, their steps infused with a bouncy energy. They spoke without hush or hesitation. I couldn’t make out faces, but I’d guess the oldest among them was 15.

They sat in the furthest back row under the projector’s cone of light, just two rows behind us. They cackled, kept on moving in their seats, which were the heavy kind of movie theater chairs that seem to like groan mechanically with even the slightest shift of weight. One of the kids repeatedly dropped change onto the floor, which cut metallically sharp in the quiet room. And "A Ghost Story" is a quiet movie. Sometimes silent. Our friendly group of high schoolers were probably audible from the front row. When Rooney Mara (one of the leads) came onto the screen, one of them said out loud “She can get it," with what I can only describe as a sultry tone of voice. I know I sound like some old dude on his front porch, cane thrust skyward and crying out “Darn kids today!” But these kids are relevant, really. Cause, halfway through the movie, all 7 of them marched out of the theater, single file, quiet as a ghost(get it?). And the thing is, I can’t even blame them for leaving.

One more bit of preamble: it’s worth mentioning the only kind of authority or expertise I have in reviewing movies is that I like to munch popcorn and stare up at movie screens, jaw slacked, eyes glazed. I like movies and I like going to the theater to see movies. I probably see a movie a week at the theater.

"A Ghost Story" is written and directed by David Lowery, who also wrote/directed last year’s Disney film "Pete's Dragon", a movie I enjoyed a lot, gooey, Hallmark sentimentality and all. It stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, who both give a quiet, if not somewhat blank faced performance. An intentional choice, I can imagine. "A Ghost Story" comes from A24Films, a relatively new production company who have been absolutely killing it lately with their movie releases (2015 seeing: "Ex Machina", "The End of The Tour", "Room"; 2016 seeing: "The Witch", "The Lobster", "Swiss Army Man", and even last year’s Oscar winner, the fantastic "Moonlight"; and this year bringing a personal favorite of mine, "It Comes at Night").

From the trailer, we get the image of a man cloaked in one of those classic, almost silly bedsheet-with-eye-holes-cut-into-it style of ghost costume, drifting through hallways and rubble, unnoticed. Visually, like almost all of A24’s releases, it looked intriguing, exciting. The first time I saw the trailer I remember getting the impression that maybe "A Ghost Story"would be one of next year’s Oscar garnering, vaguely artsy movies, that people beyond the aforementioned movie geeks would be telling each other to see. You know the kind I mean. Think Alejandro González Iñárritu’s "Birdman"; Wes Anderson’s "Grand Budapest Hotel"; Barry Jenkins’ previously mentioned "Moonlight".

If I had to name one defining trait between all kinds of movies like this (let’s call them Art Films for convenience sake. Plus, ‘Art Films’ sounds real darn pretentious, which is often pretty accurate) it would be that the ‘agenda’ of these movies, what they want out of their audience, is to make them think. Also maybe to give them an experience they’ll never forget, or to show their audience something different than your typical movie would. But ultimately, to ask of their audience to give them, Art Films, effort. For someone watching the movie to think about what they’re watching, to pay more attention than they would to, say, a summer blockbuster kind of movie. To give the movie something, so the movie can give them something in return.

I know, sounds real snotty. But think of it in relation to the kinds of movies Disney’s Marvel Studios make: think of it in opposition to the recent "Spider-Man: Homecoming". It doesn’t take much noodling in the brain to imagine that the creator’s of a movie like "Spider-Man" want to entertain you before anything else. That would be their main ‘goal’, above and beyond anything else. Not to impart you with some worldly wisdom, or to inspire you or change your life. Simply to entertain. And there is definite value in that. Movies, and in a lot of cases most entertainment, are a form of escapism. They’re there to help you forget about your mortgage and your job and your diet and your mounting student debt (don’t think about it, don’t think about it). And they do a damn good job of it. Movies like "Spider-Man" (we’ll call them ‘Studio Movies’, again, for convenience) are the kind of movies you’re allowed to shut your brain off in. I myself have no personal preference between the two. Art Film or Studio Movie, deep thought or easy fun. If it’s a good movie, whatever. Maybe this review might seem to indicate otherwise, but I’m not terribly picky.

I would definitely say "A Ghost Story"falls into the ‘Art Film’ category. In that way, its primary motivation is not to entertain the audience, in any easy way. It asks the audience to give their attention to it, as well as their money and even more importantly, their time. In my opinion, "A Ghost Story"does not reward such effort. It is a beautiful movie to look at, with an interesting concept and some honestly cool sequences. But, by the end of the movie, one leaves the theater feeling sort of let down. “That was it?” Or, one leaves halfway through the movie, before it’s even over. The movie theater I saw it in started with roughly 20 people and ended with a scantily 10.

*SOME SPOILERS*

The gist of "A Ghost Story" is that a couple, whom you get the sense are stuck in a kind of stagnant, going nowhere sort of relationship, are planning to move out of their house. One of them (Mara) is really pushing for them to move. The other (Affleck) begrudgingly does not want to move. But then, Affleck’s character dies. Maybe 20 minutes into the movie. He’s pronounced dead on arrival on a hospital slab, his wife identifies his body, pulls the sheet over his dead head, and leaves the room. A few minutes pass, and Affleck, cloaked in a hospital sheet, eye-holes and all, sits up. He gets up, leaves the room, and walks the hospital unnoticed, wearing what is essentially a clichéd kid’s Halloween costume from the 1800’s. He is the titular ghost of "A Ghost Story". He can neither be seen nor heard but can see and hear the world around him. He starts to haunt his own house, watches as his wife grieves over him. All fine and good stuff. It’s the execution of this, though, that leaves something to be desired.

This movie has a lot of visual quirks to it. One such visual signature of "A Ghost Story" is its use of long takes. Nothing groundbreaking, really- there are multiple scenes where the camera does not move, and we as the audience see an entire scene acted in real time, without any cutaways or edits. In this way, we as the audience can see everything a character does, physically. Every movement of their body, their face. Almost like watching a play. If done properly, this sort of technique in a film can be used to say a lot about a character or characters, even their relationship, without anyone in the film uttering a single syllable. And there’s a scene or two like that in this movie that works like this.

But, there is one scene that really doesn’t. Let me sketch it out for you: Mara is in her kitchen, sitting in the foreground of the scene’s shot. She is eating a pie a friend has left for her, out of the time honored tradition of feeding the grieving. She uses a spoon. In the midground, Affleck, our Bedsheet Ghost, watches her eat the pie. As she eats, Mara slowly starts to cry. Quiet, non-Hollywood-drama tears. She gorges herself on the pie as the scene keeps on rolling, again, without any cuts. Uninterrupted, she eats probably half of the pie in one sitting, until, at the tail end of the scene, Mara jolts up, runs into the background, where we can see a bathroom is. She falls to her knees in the bathroom. We hear her vomit. And that’s the scene. In its entirety, and it goes for 2 or 3 or maybe 203 minutes (I just checked- the scene is 5 minutes in total).

Now. This scene in and of itself isn’t really a problem. I get it; it illustrates a very realistic moment of a human being’s grief. But I’m gonna do an Art Film thing now, and ask you, the reader, to imagine this. To imagine watching that scene run on a massive, lush theater screen, industrial sized speakers and sound systems essentially hissing white noise, with the occasional ting of Mara’s spoon hitting the bottom of the pie tin. For 5 entire minutes. 300 seconds. At home, it’s safe to say most sane people would turn to the person they’re with and say something smart and snarky, or whip out their phones, text a friend, scroll blank faced through their Facebook, Instagram, flip through a Calculus textbook, anything. In a theater, you can’t really do that. Y’know, unless you’re a big ol’ jerk. You’re subject to the mercy of the movie. And this scene is without mercy.

It was interesting, sitting that far back in the theater, having a kind of bird’s-eye view of the crowd. People cleared their throats. Tapped feet restlessly. You could see their heads drift and bob, swaying in unconscious semi circles. You could almost taste the anxiety and restless energy spark through the crowd.I certainly felt it, and so did the adolescent goblins sitting behind me. At first, they laughed, scoffed, snickered. Then grew deathly quiet. Succumbed. But at some point, without any spoken word I was able to hear (remember, the theater is as quiet as a graveyard) as if communicated telepathically between them, the kids got up and left. Another couple, inspired, followed suit. And it’s funny that the rugrats left when they did. Almost immediately after that scene, the movie takes a turn, both in story and in pace. It goes from a glacial stride, to, well, actual movement.

I won’t go much further into the movie. I respect this movie for a lot of things. For not being an adaptation, for being a somewhat original story. For its interesting visual style, the way the movie is visually framed. For having a mere budget of $100,000, which by today’s standards ("Avengers 3" and "4" collectively having a budget of one billion dollars), is chump change in the movie business. And I hate that my first actual review of a movie will come off as ‘guy sneers at movie like he’s smarter than it.’ And it’s not even just because of the scene described up above.

There was just no kind of payoff for the effort that "A Ghost Story" asked of its audience. You get a college-level speech on nihilism, a predictable ending. Movies, art in general, are subjective, and blah blah. Different people will get different things out of "A Ghost Story". But a lot of the movie feels pretentious. It feels purposeful. Masturbatory. Like during the Pie-scene, I could almost hear the director’s voice in my head, sort of smug like the voices of the teenage monkeys in the peanut gallery in the movie theater, saying “Yes, we’ll keep the scene rolling for five whole minutes. People will walk out of the theater! It’ll be great, it’ll be so different!” But something being different or difficult is not valuable in and of itself.

If a movie asks of its audience something, the audience should get something out of it, the way they do when they watch something akin to "Birdman"or "Moonlight". And a lot of the sort of ‘stuff’ you get out of Art Films is subtle, requires digging on the viewer’s part. These kinds of films ‘Show, not Tell’, as the old storytelling adage goes. In the end, "A Ghost Story"does a whole lot of ‘telling’, I’ll tell you what. And if what an Art Film is telling you is nothing wholly original, if the maze the mouse runs through has no cheese at the end, you end up just lost and disappointed. When it comes to this movie, you're probably better off watching "Spider-Man". In this case, effort does not equal reward.

A score? Not-Worth-It/10