Ghost Town Anthology creeps up on you with its haunting premise

Still, this is by no means a horror movie, despite a few disquieting aspects. Côté adapted the screenplay from a novel by Laurence Oliver (just one “i”—not Laurence Olivier), but it nonetheless bears a notable resemblance to his previous films, which tend to be notable for their regional specificity and depictions of insular communities. At the same time, though, these characters are somewhat sketchily drawn, at least on screen. Members of Simon’s immediate family have the most cause to feel haunted by his death, yet are comparatively uninteresting (perhaps because the book’s interior monologues didn’t translate); that’s especially true of Simon’s father, Romuald (Jean-Michel Anctil), who leaves home shortly after the film begins and spends most of it wandering alone in the woods, generically distraught. More intriguing are such peripheral figures as the town mayor (Diane Lavallée), who treats offers of help from outsiders with defensive hostility, and Adèle (Larissa Corriveau), the perpetually anxious “welfare girl” (as one neighbor refers to her), who’s the first person in town to notice that something extremely bizarre is going on.

The gradual, matter-of-fact way that Côté transforms Ghost Town Anthology into an actual ghost story is quite impressive. Initially, it’s Simon who appears to be silently lurking in the distance, but other “strangers” (as they’re pointedly called) soon show up—not to threaten, exactly, but simply to take up space. What’s more, it emerges that this phenomenon isn’t restricted to Sainte-Irénée-les-Neiges, but is happening throughout Francophone Canada, albeit not in any of its major cities. That last detail, along with some on-the-nose dialogue throughout, makes the film’s ostensible subtext dispiritingly blunt: The ghosts symbolize the perceived futility of life in a “ghost town” like this one, which derived its economic sustainability from a mine that’s long since been closed. (In a nice touch, the only children ever seen, all of whom constantly wear creepy Purge-style masks while playing, turn out to be long-ago murder victims; the town effectively has no future.) But other aspects—what becomes of Adèle, in particular—are gratifyingly mysterious and open to interpretation, while Côté’s decision to shoot the entire movie handheld, but with mostly static compositions, creates a potent feeling of almost subliminal instability. Admittedly, those seeking actively frightening undead figures should look elsewhere. Then again, what’s more unnerving right now than people standing at least six feet away from you, not doing much of anything?