Presence is an atypical ghost story, in that it’s a first-person narrative told exclusively from the perspective of the ghost.  As such, the movie camera doubles as the ghost’s “eyes”, zooming around the suburban home setting like a hyperactive drone.  That’s because the camera actually is a drone, operated by Academy Award-winning director Stephen Soderbergh.

If Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, how bad would it be if that woman was a ghost?  According to Ghost Story, that would be very bad indeed for those responsible for her scorn.  In the movie, the ghost is Alma (Alice Krige), and she’s been giving a group of old men nightmares for years.  These men, who collectively go by the name of the Chowder Society, meet once a month to tell each other ghost stories.  The group includes Ricky (Fred Astaire), John (Melvyn Douglas), Edward (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and Sears (John Houseman).  How Alma and the Chowder Society are connected is the central mystery of the story, and I don’t want to give that away up front.  It involves an ill-fated summer romance when all parties were much younger, which led to an accident that became an unspeakable tragedy.  Despite their best efforts to put what happened behind them, the past has not stayed in the past.

As I grow older, I sometimes wonder what the afterlife is like.  Will it follow the Catholic doctrine I was raised in, and be a celestial wonderland where everyone sings hymns and floats along on wings?  While that certainly sounds nice, I suspect I would get bored with it after a millennia or two.  Or maybe the afterlife will be like what Tim Burton envisioned in Beetlejuice, a world where the dead alternate between haunting the living and traveling to a janky bureaucracy.  Call me crazy, but the latter sounds like more fun.

One theory about crime that I’ve latched onto is how criminal activity is driven by the need to feel in control.  Generally speaking, criminals want to control the things they lack.  For example, a wealthy person controls money.  When a person of limited means steals it, they obtain control over the other person’s money.  (I’m grossly oversimplifying “Control Balance theory”, by the way.  Search on it if you’d like to know more.)  Similarly, a person can effectively control another person through a variety of criminal behaviors, principle among them being physical assault and murder.  The latter examples came to mind while I watched Blink Twice, where the desire to control another person, both mentally and physically, explains what we see, if only superficially.