A GHOST WAITS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ADAM STOVALL / SCREENPLAY: ADAM STOVALL, MATT TAYLOR / STARRING: MACLEOD ANDREWS, NATALIE WALKER, SYDNEY VOLLMER, AMANDA MILLER / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Jack is a handyman who fixes up vacant properties ahead of their becoming occupied. After being tasked with identifying why a particular house has an unusually high turnover of tenants, he soon discovers the cause is it being haunted by the ghostly Muriel who is tasked with scaring humans away. The odd situation from which neither can back down leads to the pair growing closer.

Stories about haunted houses are even older the horror medium itself, and the endless variations on them often make it hard to come up with something different. The best of such tales are not so much about the apparitions and scares, but their more emotional and human themes, the exploration of which typically reveals why such entities remain chained to the earthly plane.

The debut feature of director Adam Stovall, A Ghost Waits taps into the poignant potential of the latter kind, and as a light-hearted romantic horror movie, is an impressive achievement with its limited resources. Reminiscent of a simplified Beetlejuice or a gender-flipped reworking of The Ghost and Mrs Muir, the stark simplicity of the setup and the small cast make for an intimate experience.

The movie begins by showing just how effective Muriel’s scare tactics are as a family vacates the building in flustered terror, but when she subjects Jack to the same tricks they prove ineffective as he first remains oblivious to them as though stumbling blind through a Paranormal Activity sequel, and then simply refusing to accept anything unusual is happening.

As Muriel makes herself known and they begin interacting, the pair’s relationship that forms the core of the movie begins to develop. At first they are curious about the nature of each other’s jobs, tacitly addressing their conflicting determination to see their assigned tasks through to the end. In spite of this, they are inexorably drawn closer to each other as they begin to realise how adrift they are in their respective existences, with Muriel manifesting spectral apparitions whose purpose nobody bothered to explain to her, while Jack himself is also something of phantom in limbo, unable to return home and ignored by the people he calls for help.

The intimacy of their interactions gradually increases until it develops into something romantic, their incompatible levels of corporeality not factoring into their simply being two lost and lonely people who have managed to find each other, not unlike many nascent relationships in reality.

The movie’s black and white photography imbues the visuals with a retro charm that takes the atmosphere out of the empty new build to instead evoke the gothic ambiance of country mansions in which such tales are traditionally told. Unusually, it’s light rather than shadow that the photography emphasises, the humanity of the tale shining from the darkness.

It’s generally a bad idea to reference a film’s ending in a review, but it’s important in this case as its triggering events have the potential to spoil the experience. It’s clear what Stovall is attempting to do and his intent is admirable, but it will be polarising for many and for some may go as far to undo the goodwill the rest of the story has built up. In retrospect it doesn’t detract too much, but remains a little jarring.

Overall, A Ghost Waits is an accomplished debut that marks Stovall as talented at achieving a considerable amount with very little. Through its light-hearted tone the film explores loss, loneliness and ennui at being without a place in the world, but with enough warmth and humour to win over even the most cynical of us.