Rating: 4 / 5 stars

“A Ghost Story” is a slow-paced, reflective, spiritual film about time. It is also a movie whose protagonist is a mute, bedsheet ghost with eyeholes cut out. These two aspects of the film should prove completely disparate, yet they gel seamlessly together, creating a poignant picture of loss and the passage of time. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this January, Director David Lowery’s (“Pete’s Dragon”) low budget indie finally makes its way to home video after a limited theatrical release in late summer. It is capital ‘A’ art-house, with its methodical pace and elusive plot making it a film that will likely aggravate impatient moviegoers or those looking for any real scares.

A couple, ‘C’ (Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea”) and ‘M’ (Rooney Mara, “Lion”), prepare to move out of their small home, but tragedy strikes when he is killed in a car crash outside of the home. Shortly thereafter, he rises from the slab draped in a six-foot sheet with black eyeholes. The Ghost is who we follow throughout the film, but “A Ghost Story” is as much a story about the house in which he lived as it is a story about the ghost who inhabits it. The Ghost travels through time as he watches his girlfriend struggling to cope with his loss and eventually moving away from their house. “A Ghost Story” cares more about emotion and subtext than a more conventional, linear narrative. It spends roughly seven minutes on a single shot of Rooney Mara eating pie while the Ghost stands and watches, and then a few scenes later, it jumps decades into the future.

With the lead actor mute and draped under a blanket for a majority of the proceedings, Casey Affleck has to act more like if he were acting in a silent play rather than a feature film. Affleck does the ghost sheet great justice, lending the character an innocent, lost-dog feeling as he slouches his shoulders and bows his head to show the sadness of The Ghost. As a ghost, he can only talk to the other sheet specter trapped in the neighbor’s home telepathically and can interact with the physical world by flickering lights or levitating plates. Aside from one short monologue from a houseguest at a party and a few lines between the couple, “A Ghost Story” is as close to a silent film as any can get. Daniel Hart’s (“Pete’s Dragon”) beautiful orchestral score fills in some of the long quiet moments throughout and wonderfully imbues the film with a sense of spacey dread.

“A Ghost Story” is a nearly silent film about a bed sheet ghost methodically moving forward and back through time, shot in a 4:3 rounded square aspect ratio. On paper, it is a movie that does not work, and it really should not, but it does. It all works so well. It is emotional, thought provoking, and wholeheartedly original. “A Ghost Story” is a film that will not find a large audience, and many will find its methodical pacing a slog, but those who come in with open minds and an eagerness to watch something unlike most other movies they have seen before will find an absolutely spectacular emotional journey.

Photo provided by A24 via YouTube.com