A Ghost Story
A24 | Release Date: July 7, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 46 Critic Reviews
Positive:
41
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
CineVueJoe WalshAug 24, 2017
It's an offbeat narrative, and it demands patience, but it's so worth the wait in the final moments of the film, proving to be a graceful examination of love found and lost. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 24, 2017
It exists in an eerie cinematic in-between, and is completely unlike anything else you’ll see this year. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt GlasbyAug 15, 2017
Like an arthouse Ghost, this is bold, original filmmaking with a pervasive sense of amused detachment. Read full review
60
EmpirePhil de SemlyenAug 7, 2017
It demands patience and an open mind, but Lowery’s return to his indie roots after Pete’s Dragon is a highly unusual and, at times, emotionally shattering fable. Read full review
91
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 3, 2017
David Lowery's A Ghost Story is a different sort of haunting, a quiet reverie of never letting go of people, places, anything. Some viewers may think it silly, others profound, but there's no other movie quite like it. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineJeremy MathewsJul 27, 2017
A Ghost Story rewards viewers who are willing to engage with it, to accept its evolving premise and experience the expressionless specter’s afterlife as it reveals itself. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJul 27, 2017
Working from his own screenplay, director David Lowery (“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”) delivers a risky, challenging film that unfolds with a spellbinding momentum. Just what it all means is left to the viewer to contemplate. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Dave McGinnJul 20, 2017
If you’ve ever loved anyone or anything, A Ghost Story is going to break your heart. It is devastating – and devastatingly good. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 20, 2017
A Ghost Story may be the ultimate litmus test of where you fall on the line between artistic merit and laughable pretension. Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonJul 19, 2017
Well, the movie is trippy and almost willfully opaque — all I can say for sure is I left A Ghost Story feeling full. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 18, 2017
David Lowery has made a movie that is as outside the pattern of our current popular filmmaking as can be possibly imagined. That takes more than vision alone. It takes courage. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekJul 13, 2017
Lowery can't always keep the movie from drifting through the mists of pretension, and the tremulous, too-precious score, by Daniel Hart, is sometimes intrusive. Still, the picture's visual imagery--the cinematographer is Andrew Droz Palermo--is so restlessly poetic that it's hard to turn away. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreJul 13, 2017
Its spooky tone and the odd jolt don’t remedy its chilly remoteness or self-conscious longueurs. But it’s good to be reminded that there’s a reason we cling to the afterlife as a concept and flock to films that indulge that belief, the warm and fuzzy versions, anyway. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 13, 2017
David Lowery's film A Ghost Story is best seen a second time, though obeying the customary rules of time and cinema, you'll have the mysterious pleasure of seeing it a first time to get there. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJul 13, 2017
By the standards of the traditional ghost story, A Ghost Story isn’t much of one. By the standards of the moody art-house meditation on love, loss, memory, forgetting, attachment, letting go and the nature of eternity, it’s pretty darn great. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJul 12, 2017
Maddeningly, A Ghost Story can seem more like a creative exercise than a fully formed narrative construct. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 12, 2017
Roughly 60 percent of A Ghost Story is disturbingly beautiful and spiritually challenging and stuck to me like a memory magnet. About 40 percent of A Ghost Story is maddeningly still and achingly self-conscious and just a little too pleased with itself. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 10, 2017
Even at its most self-conscious, there’s something lovable about A Ghost Story. Read full review
100
VoxAlissa WilkinsonJul 8, 2017
A Ghost Story isn’t all sorrow and grief. There’s a kind of deadpan humor throughout — the sheet ghost is comical, and there’s no getting around it — that complicates the film and rewards a rewatch. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoJul 8, 2017
A Ghost Story leads you down a path that allows for personal reflection, which will either sooth lost souls or scare them away. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartJul 6, 2017
C’s wordless vigil will send you away with a shivery melancholy that defies easy explanation. And that, after all, is the essence of every good ghost story. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 6, 2017
There are mysteries here, not the least of them being how such a modest little movie can evoke such profound feelings. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJul 6, 2017
It’s a simple, wrenching story of love and loss that pries open a window onto eternity. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 6, 2017
A Ghost Story is suspenseful, dourly funny and at times piercingly emotional. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensJul 6, 2017
In its brief sojourn on the screen, A Ghost Story moves through centuries of geologic time and into the deepest recesses of the human heart. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJul 6, 2017
I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is one of those movies. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jul 5, 2017
Get on the wavelength of this mesmerizing, singularly unusual genre experiment and the undead being at its center stops looking so silly. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 5, 2017
This is a poetic and profound experiment you do not want to miss. Read full review
100
USA TodayBrian TruittJul 5, 2017
While at times bleak, A Ghost Story isn't devoid of hope. More essentially, the best film so far this year is a thought-provoking, singularly special masterpiece about love, mortality and how our heart keeps beating even after it stops. Read full review
95
The VergeChris PlanteJul 4, 2017
Some will say it’s pretentious, obtuse, and masturbatory, and they’d be able to find plenty of evidence. But there’s so much to love here, largely because the film is something of an inkblot. Concealed and mute, Affleck the ghost acts as a cypher on which to place one’s hopes, fears, and closely held suspicions about the meaning of life. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJul 3, 2017
The ghost, on the other hand, grows ever more imposing, and the movie’s most touching spectacle — it’s also the funniest — is that of C standing at the window and waving to another ghost, in the adjacent house. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineSam C. MacJul 2, 2017
An empty exercise in imitative long-take aestheticism, A Ghost Story fills its distractingly round-cornered frame with endless repetitions on a visual gag. Read full review
60
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonJun 29, 2017
“Every love story is a ghost story,” David Foster Wallace wrote more than once. That evocative observation is probed in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, a film that occasionally reaches a similar level of eloquence. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldJun 29, 2017
Bring patience — and a fondness for Malick-ish stillness — and perhaps find reward. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJun 29, 2017
Some, no doubt, will find Lowery’s playfully surreal experiment (a ghost story told from the POV of the ghost) haunting, lyrical, and moving. Others (ahem, guilty as charged) will just find it maddening, inscrutable, and alienating. Check it out, then take your side in the debate. Read full review
100
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerJan 26, 2017
A Ghost Story is filmmaking that challenges and exhilarates, a potent reminder of how many new places film can still be taken even after a century of people working in the medium. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 24, 2017
Lowery is committing to nothing less than the scope of eternity; frankly, sometimes it feels as much. But by doing so, he does more to explore supernatural sadness than any thriller I can think of. He’s crafted something strange and wonderful, with a romantic metaphysics all its own. Read full review
80
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJan 23, 2017
Not all is explained in A Ghost Story, but enough is there for vibrant discussion to break out the minute the credits rolled. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushMatt SingerJan 23, 2017
This film disturbed me way more than most conventional horror movies, because Lowery understands that the really frightening part of any haunted house tale isn’t the ghost or the demon or the everyday objects moving of their own accord. It’s the reminder that death is coming for us all, whether we’re ready for it or not. Read full review
91
The PlaylistNoel MurrayJan 22, 2017
A Ghost Story has the structure and rhythm of a musical suite, with Lowry working variations on the same themes, the same characters, and the same location. The result can be lyrical and poetic, or more naturalistic and minimalist. In both cases, A Ghost Story is absolutely mesmerizing, with an anything-goes quality that’s endlessly fascinating. Read full review
100
The Film StageJordan RaupJan 22, 2017
The psychological weight of our certain death and the fact that life will go on long after we are departed is difficult to visually convey, but A Ghost Story is one of the most poignant films to ever grapple with this existential question. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnJan 22, 2017
Lowery manages to find entertainment value and genuine intrigue from his outlandish scenario, synthesizing the magical realism of his earlier films with a tighter grasp of tone. Read full review
85
TheWrapSteve PondJan 22, 2017
It’s a strange, sad, fragile little thing that should make us snicker, but instead it fills the screen with grace and beauty. Read full review
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 22, 2017
David Lowery’s beautifully conceived riff on the haunted-house movie emits an extra glow thanks to challenging but resonant performances from Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeJan 22, 2017
While Lowery’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, it’s sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 22, 2017
The sense of time passing is hypnotic, and the image of the ghost, wounded and watching, unable to communicate or offer comfort, becomes more eerie and beautiful the longer we observe it. Read full review
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