Offensively awful. A Ghost Story may be the most condescending piece of junk I've ever witnessed. It's loathsome. The writer-director David Lowery revels in self-indulgence while pretending to be profound. Sooner rather than later, his delight in insulting the living, the dead, and whatever audience he may have for his wretched movie becomes all too plainly apparent. The slaughter of the frontier family is absolutely grotesque, but this horrible film already establishes itself as pose-striking, empty hipster trash long before that happens. Vile and reprehensible. Definitely NOT "cosmic," as loser New York critics claim. I loved Rooney Mara in "Carol," but there's nothing she can do to redeem Lowery's distasteful idiocy. The immature auteur seemingly wants us to empathize with the ghost, yet he undermines the shrouded figure by contrived, dishonest means. With its static takes and laborious longueurs, A Ghost Story might well be christened "Malick for Morons."

Not worth staying awake for.

We still can't decide if this film is brilliant or laugh-out-loud ridiculous in the way visitors to an art museum view a single red dot on white canvas. Either way, you will probably want to lean on the fast-forward button of your remote until the final ten or fifteen minutes. I guess overall it would have been a great 20-minute film short, but is tortuous as a 90 minute movie.

This movie scared me at first because I thought it was going to be a cheesy, cliche, and cheap-thrill ghost story. I was pleasantly surprised as the movie progressed. This is a slow-paced philosophical thought experiment. It's like a blend of The Tree of Life and Groundhog Day.

Maybe I’m not sublime. I can’t believe I watched Rooney Mara eat half a pie. And then throw up. What? I am curious how they got so much fabric for the ghost. I didn’t see any side seams, but I did see a hem. “Chilly music playing, tense string music, sentimental music playing, ominous music playing, eerie ambiance.” I had the captions on because I didn’t want to miss any dialogue. No worries there. I wondered if Casey Affleck was under the sheet or if they paid a not so expensive actor to be under the sheet. “… singular exploration of legacy, loss, and the essential human longing for meaning and connection. “ Hmmmm. How did I miss that?

One of the most extraordinary, haunting & heartbreaking takes on the everyday ghost story. Obviously, it's a love-it-or-hate-it type of movie. If "unconventional / thought-provoking" are your things, definitely give this a try. For all others, "enter at your own risk" ;-) See it ~

If you can stay awake thru this, you have true stamina.
Long long stretches of no dialogue.

All a matter of taste. Straight away I'd say forget about typical ghost stories which are ordinarily meant to be frightening, humorous or a combination of the two. As with all films this one should be researched first. This reviewer looks past all the platitudes ("lovely, mysterious, cosmic," "a reflection on the enormity of time," and "inventive, artful and poignant") in order to rate "A Ghost Story" as simply unrateable, at least in any conventional way. If it's a Casey Affleck/ Rooney Mara fix one is looking for I'd suggest "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" by the same director.

Could see where this one was coming from a mile away. In its bold attempt to be profound it falls just short of insipid.

It's a different and quirky film.... sometimes slow paced, but overall interesting enough that I wanted to keep watching until the end. It makes you think about how we process and grieve death in all of its forms. I would recommend, especially if you are into independent film that's off the beaten path.