A GHOST WAITS
The best micro-budget haunted-house movie you haven’t seen yet.
FILM OUT NOW ARROW
Shot in extremely quick fashion over just 12 days in a suburban house for a micro-budget of only $45,000, Adam Stovall’s delightful directorial debut is full to the brim with low-key charm and high-wire narrative twists.
Stovall co-wrote the beguiling script with MacLeod Andrews, who also stars as Jack, a handyman appointed to do repair work on a house that’s been vacated suddenly – so suddenly, in fact, that the occupants left all their worldly belongings behind. Jack soon discovers the house is haunted by “spectral agent” Muriel (Natalie Walker), who’s now intent on making him vacate the premises. Jack refuses to give in to her scare tactics, which might just be the start of a beautiful friendship…
With its monochrome lensing and insouciant deconstruction of genre, there’s a bit of early Jim Jarmusch to
A Ghost Waits, though an obvious reference point is Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. Stovall’s film gets laughs from the idea that ghosts are ruled by bureaucracy as much as the rest of us, and Walker is a hoot as she glides between banshee howls and being reprimanded by her afterlife superiors for ill-structuring her haunting.
To reveal more of where the leftfield plotting takes us would be to spoil the fun, but suffice to say there’s genuine profundity to go with the mild scares, consistent laughs and emotional sincerity. A film to “oooOOOooh” and “aah” about. Jamie Graham