‘The Ghost Writer’ Review: A Portrait of a Tortured Artist
I usually know if I’m going to like a film pretty early on. But that wasn’t the case with Paul Wilkins’ The Ghost Writer. I kept going back and forth throughout the picture’s runtime. In fact, I am still a bit conflicted after watching and digesting. There are pieces that I really enjoyed but there are just as many that didn’t quite work, making The Ghost Writer something of a mixed bag.
Gill (Luke Mably) is an author living in the shadow of his more celebrated father. Determined to write a new book, Gill returns to the cabin where his dad did most of his work. During his stay, Gill happens upon an old manuscript his father was working on. While afflicted with writer’s block, Gill makes the fateful decision to appropriate his dad’s work as his own. But in doing so, he must confront his father’s demons. And some of his own.
The Ghost Writer has a satisfying conclusion where everything eventually starts to make sense and fall into place. But the journey to get there is often harrowing (not in a good way) and meanders too much. It’s pretty apparent from the get-go that the characters Gill interacts with at the cabin are not real or at least not alive. Because their threat level is immediately identifiable as very low, they don’t come across as particularly imposing. With the first 60 minutes of the film lacking a credible threat, I had a hard time staying fully invested.
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When Jane (Andrea Deck), who may well be a figment of Gill’s imagination, shows up, she helps to introduce the central mystery. But the viewer is given precious little information, likely to keep the final reveal from being too obvious. Because of that, I found myself a bit bored and frustrated. While the dynamic between Gill and Jane is often contentious, it doesn’t establish even a modicum of tension.
Guy Fee and Paul Wilkins’ script devotes most of the first two acts to pitting Gill against his inner demons and personifying the horrors of the writing process. That piece is effectively rendered and I could relate to it. Moreover, there is some insightful commentary within about the way good art sometimes comes from a tortured place. But I wish The Ghost Writer had spent a little less time on that and made more room for some meatier narrative developments in the film’s first hour.
I enjoyed seeing Wilkins and Fee take some cues from The Shining. There are a few narrative parallels and a number of homages to that influential effort. Aside from a tortured writer battling his inner demons, a portion of the proceedings are set in a hotel; Gill eventually starts writing with the assistance of an old typewriter, and there is a chilling development involving an axe. I do wish The Ghost Writer had tapped into a similar level of tension as The Shining, though. What’s going on inside Jack’s mind is terrifyingly brought to life. Here, Gill’s demons just kind of exist without adding the requisite level of menace for which one hopes.
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Without giving too much away, I can say there is a credible threat somewhere within the narrative. And we eventually get the full picture of that. But that doesn’t happen until well into the picture’s runtime. If the filmmakers had given us more breadcrumbs to raise the threat level a bit or made the characters with whom Gill interacts a little more ominous, that would have gone a long way toward evening out the pace.
All in all, I enjoyed The Ghost Writer. But I wanted more from the story. I wanted to be captivated. Sadly, I never reached the point of being fully immersed in the proceedings. With that said, I enjoyed the way things came together in the end. I also appreciated the homages to The Shining and the commentary on the sometimes painful nature of the creative process.
If you are interested in checking The Ghost Writer out for yourself, you can find the film on Digital and VOD now.
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‘The Ghost Writer’
Summary
‘The Ghost Writer’ won’t be terribly memorable for most but there are still moments that work well.
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