Desposesión y desencanto del espectro contemporáneo: el fantasma en I Am a Ghost (2012), I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (2016) y A Ghost Story (2017)

Abstract

Ghosts have invaded the film screen since the very beginning of cinema. They have become icons of otherness showing different degrees of visibility, always representing an intrusion from the margins of the excluded, like an ominous force that impels us to solve their enigma in order to neutral- ize their threatening presence and, thus, restore the logical and quotidian order. The postmodern ghost, however, as presented in I am a Ghost (2012), I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (2016) and A Ghost Story (2017), emerges as a suspended sign illustrating our fragmented essence, so standing as an unresolvable sign. These films epitomize the new trend of cinematic ghosts, reflections on our fading into extinction, disorientation and doubts about life after death, stories in which the ghost's point of view —and even their narrative voice— is adopted, their physicality on screen granted, when confessing their (our) existential grief.