Netflix Watch: We Have a Ghost (2023)

Watched:  03/02/2023

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christopher Landon

Well, I was looking for something else on Netflix and saw the #1 streaming movie was something I'd never heard of but it starred Captain America, Jennifer Coolidge and Jim Hopper.  And I generally liked the premise of people catching evidence of a ghost and what that might actually mean in 2023.

We Have a Ghost (2023) feels, however, like a few movies that were shuffled together from different results from different writers all given the same prompt and characters but no guidance for what genre this movie was, who it was for, and especially no plot outline.  The result is a strange mish-mash of a film that wants to be funny, touching, exciting, a road movie, a haunted house movie, a teen romance, a wacky buddy comedy, a sci-fi flick...  and a touching story about family, father-child relations and probably ten more things.  I thought it was a kid's movie til about halfway through, and then was like... well, no.

That said, it's weirdly watchable.  It may not be great, or even particularly good, mainly because it bounces so fast from idea to idea that nothing ever really sticks - but it does have some crazy talent in the movie and so you get to see how that can prop up a very shaky film.  David Harbour never even really talks, and still gives a genuinely moving performance.  Anthony Mackie reminds you why he gets cast in so much stuff playing a guy hitting middle-age who thinks maybe he finally struck oil, Jennifer Coolidge is Jennifer Coolidge (if she were a TV ghost-psychic).  Tig Notaro plays the scientist - who seems to have a backstory they left on the cutting room floor - who is mixed up in ghost-chasing, the government G-Men and everything else.  

Our lead is young actor Jahi Di'allo Winston who is very good.  But, man, the movie sure takes its time making it clear you should like his character.  

I don't want to dwell on it too much.  It had a lot of issues.  But I also felt like it got weirdly violent for a minute or two, and it didn't really know a movie can say something, not just be a series of events that unspool.  There's no subtext - this movie is all text.  

The most promising bit of the film, and where I thought it was going before it decided it was not that, is immediately after the evidence of the ghost hits the internet.  You get to see humanity - filtered through the modern internet - doesn't know if the ghost is real-real or not, and makes him into something meme-able and for discourse and all the dumb shit we do as people.  But then the film spins off into something about government overreach, lasers, and a tragic back story I don't know anyone was sitting around hoping for based on the premise.  

SPOILER

I also was just like - did Anthony Mackie really get taken out by a very old man with a pan?  Like...  no one saw that and said "this isn't working."  They just let it be a thing that happened in a movie we all watched.