Ghostlight crept up on me as I was watching and slapped me in the face with how good it was. It was never bad… but it kind of hid its point and its direction well so once I saw where it was going, and got over a certain personal cynicism, I adored it.

The flick is about an aging, reserved construction worker and his family who have recently suffered a tragedy. Now with pressure piling up, he falls in with a gang of community theater actors who need his help putting on a Shakespeare play. He joins… but hides it from his family out of old school embarrassment.

Without spoilers, my cynical brain wasn’t on board with how on-the-nose the combination of the family tragedy and the Shakespeare play was. I thought it was too transparent as screenwriting. But, yeah, joke’s on me since that the longer the movie went,, the more the play and real life bled into each other until I found myself watching and crying. Yes, it’s obvious where its going thematically and yet it worked.

The structure of this story hides the emotional trauma the family went through. We are left guessing what happened … which reminds me of a couple other movies this year. But this one doesn’t rely so heavily on the reveal… and yet understanding how it connects to the play hits hard, especially once they get past the facts and into the emotions.

The cast is mostly made up of actors over a certain age and there’s gentle comedy to that. They are joined by newcomer Katherine Mallen Kupferer who is great as a theater nerd who demurs at praise but clearly adores it… but who is also angry and rebellious. Her real-life dad – Keith Kupferer – players her movie dad and her real-life mom – Tara Mallen – plays her movie mom. A family of actors playing a tight-knit but strained movie family. I love it. It was perfect casting, especially for Keith Kupferer who is not the kind of guy who usually leads a film, especially one that asks his tough guy persona to perform Shakespeare and have such emotional moments.

This is a great film… I highly recommend it to anyone wants a heartfelt family drama mixed with tragedy mixed with a love for community theater and acting. It’s wonderful, charming, emotional, and funny.

Score: 92