Cry of the Week: Rooney Mara grieves in the first trailer for 'A Ghost Story'
Welcome to our weekly series "Cry of the Week," in which we highlight whatever moment made us ugly cry on our couches the most in the past seven days.
Yes, A Ghost Story is literally a ghost story. But not the kind that'll make you scream or give you nightmares.
Instead, it's a Ghost Story that wants to haunt you – and maybe even make you cry.
Directed by David Lowery, who last helmed the touching family fantasy Pete's Dragon, A Ghost Story stars Rooney Mara as a woman grieving the very recent death of her husband (Casey Affleck). So he returns as a ghost, watching his widow mourn, unable to comfort her, while she eventually moves on.
Distributor A24 unveiled the first A Ghost Story trailer this week, and as unapologetically weird as this looks, it hit us right in the feels.
(The fact that Casey Affleck continues to thrive despite those disturbing allegations makes us want to cry in a different way, but that's a discussion for another time.)
A Ghost Story isn't exactly what you'd call a traditional tearjerker. With its dreamy and quiet vibe, it looks more Tree of Life than The Fault in Our Stars. Anyone who tune in expecting the latter will probably be befuddled by scenes like the one of Rooney Mara just eating pie.
Still, A Ghost Story was one of the most buzzed-about titles of Sundance, with critics praising it as a touching meditation on some major themes. (Cinefix's Clint Gage had some nice words for it, describing it as "sweet, sad, beautifully shot.")
And the trailer, by all accounts, does a good job of capturing the odd spirit of the film, with an assist from Dark Rooms' melancholy "I Get Overwhelmed."
So what we have here is a movie unafraid to tackle the stuff we're really depressed about, the stuff we're really scared of, like grief, loss, memory, and the inevitable march of time. What could be more devastating than that?
A Ghost Story will roll out to theaters starting July 7, just in case you needed something moodier to bring you down from your Spider-Man: Homecoming high.
