A Ghost Story (David Lowery, 2017): A Quintessential Post-horror Film?

Abstract

The representation of the spectral on screen raises questions about the porosity of the boundary between the visible and the invisible, absence and presence, the living and the dead, the real and the imaginary. This article focuses on A Ghost Story (David Lowery, 2017), identified as representative of post-horror cinema and which stands out from Hollywood conventions with a refusal of the spectacular and graphic horror and a focus on temporality, contemplation, memory, and the impossible mourning of a loss. We will analyze some of the foremost features of the film, the way in which the ghost is represented, his relationships to space, to the human environment and to time. We will then examine the film’s links with modernist literature and slow cinema and we will finally discuss its relation with the Gothic mode.