We Have a Ghost

There is certainly nothing wrong with the idea of We Have a Ghost. Christopher Landon, the screenwriter behind Paranormal Activity 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and the director of 2020's Freaky (which has a murderous Vince Vaughn in one of the lead roles) has tried in Netflix's latest comedy to mix Ghostbusters with Beetlejuice and then spice it up with E.T, Casper, and Poltergeist and the result could have worked. It might have worked, if it weren't for the fact that he could never quite decide what tone to take.

One second We Have a Ghost is dramatic. Tears within an already fractured family cause youngest son Kevin to disappear into the world of music while his stressed-out father tries to find a way for the family to regain their footing. In the midst of all this, introvert Kevin stumbles across a flying ghost in their newly purchased house who needs help. Stranger Things hunk David Harbour plays the kindly, lost ghost Ernest who has been roaming the unsellable jumble of houses for decades without finding a way to find peace. The idea of making a movie about a kid who has no friends but befriends a misunderstood ghost is not new. We've seen that movie time and time again, but it could have worked - if it didn't stack several different movies on top of each other.

Because sometimes director Christopher Landon wants to scare, he throws in scenes where the ghost Ernest's face drips off his skull, or scenes where a bloody zombie arm comes out of his mouth and grabs people by the throat. Other times, Landon wants you to just sit on the couch and cuddle up to a movie about friendship, sprinkling in wasted "romance" and misplaced comedy that is then replaced with drama, where the rifts within the family are brought out all over again. With no new angles or fresh points of view. In the midst of all this, viewers end up a bit in no man's land, because none of the various elements of this film are followed up, flourish, develop or have anything to say. It just piles up, on top of each other. Into one big pile of mostly misplaced nonsense. By the time the most overrated comedian of all time, Tig Notaro, steps in as a CIA-employed ghost expert and the government pounds away with special forces and assault rifles, I've already zoned out and snoozed.

Harbour is pretty easy to like and I think Falcon actor Anthony Mackie does a decent job in the role of Dad Frank, but everything else here falls flat to the ground. Worst besides the strange mish-mash of tone and pacing is Jahi Di'Allo Winston in the role of his son Kevin, many of his key scenes are painfully bad with acting that completely lacks presence.

With comedy moments and heartfelt ones that both manage to fall incredibly flat, We Have a Ghost is certainly not the Casper replacement it had dreamed to be, and ends up being a mostly skippable film with a few decent actors.