On paper, We Have a Ghost feels like another Landon triumph. The story centers around a family (Jahi Winston, Anthony Mackie, Erica Ash, Niles Fitch) who moves into a new house outside of Chicago and sees their lives becomes a lot more complicated when they discover a mute ghost (David Harbour) living in their attic. As the story's scope quickly expands, the opportunities for Landon to work his genre-melding magic increase as elements of comedy, fantasy, mystery, horror, conspiracy thriller, adventure, family drama and even a bit of satire courtesy of a subplot involving Mackie's character attempting to turn the presence of the ghost in their house into a business opportunity after a video he took of him goes viral online all manage to take up some narrative real estate. About the only thing Landon would have to change from his normal approach is tailoring the material towards a younger audience than he's used to aiming for as We Have a Ghost is aimed more at the older kids/young teen set than the high school age kids/adults he's used to making movies for.
Despite this material being something that felt like a natural fit for Landon, the genre cocktail of We Have a Ghost just doesn't quite come together like it has in his past films. There's never really a sense that Landon is totally invested in how all these puzzle pieces fit together and it leads to something that is competent enough to get from point A to B without ever completely losing its focus yet aimless enough to regularly feel random and confused with its creative choices. Was this comparative lack of investment driven by this being the first time Landon has made something that was directly adapted from pre-existing material (the short story Ernest by Geoff Manaugh)? Possibly, but regardless of what the cause is, it sucked to see a filmmaker whose typically so giddy to meld genres together be so comparatively blasé about it at the very moment he obtained a sizable budget to work with.
There is one Landon staple that survived the upsizing and fortunately, it's one of the most important ones of all: displays of honest human emotion. No matter how big the stakes or how sloppy the combining of different subgenres gets, Landon is always able to carve out space for the characters' feelings and humanity to shine through. Winston's quiet loner teen and Harbour's Ernest develop a sweet bond over their shared outcast status and treat each other with the empathy and respect that neither have them enjoyed in quite some time. Mackie crushes a pivotal late scene between him and Winston with a powerful, honest monologue where he expresses his love for his son and apologizes for losing his way as a parent at some point. Even a big obvious tearjerker scene at the end of the film ends up being moving because it represents a key moment of cathartic closure for the journeys these characters go on over the course of the film. It's in these moments where We Have a Ghost actually does bear a resemblance to the 80's movies it wants to emulate (E.T., Gremlins, The Goonies) and it's ultimately what keeps the movie from being done in by its weaker elements.
There are plenty of lessons for Landon to learn from We Have a Ghost and based on his previous track record, I think his next big budget outing will go smoother. The issues here aren't rooted in an inability to handle bigger setpieces or incorporating more CGI into his work, they come down to things like telling the story with more gusto and cohesion-which he's already proven he can do with consistency on his past projects. His next film is set to be a remake of Arachnophobia, which given the guaranteed presence of CGI spiders-should provide a nice litmus for where Landon stands in this current grander scale chapter of his career.
Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment