[Review] Grimmfest Easter: Ghosts Of The Ozarks

Expectations can wreak havoc with a viewing experience. If you go into a film expecting a horror story, as I did with Ghosts of the Ozarks, and you find instead a Western drama that seems rather uninterested in its own horror elements, you might be disappointed. Still, expectations can be adjusted, and as I recalibrated to take in Ghosts of the Ozarks on its own terms, I found a small production with a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera. Unfortunately, I also found a film that can’t quite figure out what kind of movie it wants to be or what it wants to say. 

There are interesting questions in Ghosts of the Ozarks; the realities of racism in post-Civil War America, what it takes to achieve harmony with your neighbors, the effects of greed and power on marginalized people⸺but they never come together into cohesive ideas. The film boasts an impressive cast of character actors, but the script gives them little to do. The pacing is odd; long stretches of the film feel like they were lifted from a dramatic cable miniseries about a small-town doctor learning to get along with the locals in his new town, yet these scenes do little to develop the film’s characters.

Dr. James McCune (Thomas Hobson) travels to Norfork, Arkansas, after receiving a letter from his Uncle Matthew (Phil Morris) inviting him to come live in this special town where everyone has their own purpose. Matthew runs Norfork, and he informs James that they’re in need of a new town doctor. When James arrives, he discovers that Norfork is surrounded by ghost-infested woods; after James escapes the ghosts, he must make himself at home in the new and strange town. He takes in the racial harmony that Matthew boasts about⸺the film takes place just after the Civil War, yet there is no hint within the walls of Norfork of racist animosity⸺and he seems cautiously optimistic about finding a new home here. But the ghosts threaten the townspeople, and James soon learns that there are sinister secrets underlying the town’s harmonious facade. 

As the protagonist, James provides our view into Norfork: we meet the community and witness troubling hints of a sinister underbelly through his eyes. But James himself is a bit of a cypher. All we know about James’s personality is that he seems quite fearful. This is, of course, an understandable state to be in, given the fact that he’s a Black man living in the Southern United States immediately following the Civil War, not to mention that he lives in a walled community surrounded by bloodthirsty ghosts. But James feels thinly written, and Hobson doesn’t give the character anything beyond what is already on the page. He can’t quite measure up to the presence or energy of the actors surrounding him⸺in addition to Morris, who makes Matthew a formidable leader with intriguing motives, the film boasts a cast including Tim Blake Nelson as Torb, the local innkeeper; Angela Bettis as Torb’s wife Lucille; and David Arquette as Douglas, the local haberdasher.

It’s an exciting prospect to see Bettis and Arquette together again after their terrific film 12 Hour Shift, but unfortunately Bettis’s talents are largely wasted in a role that rarely requires her to do anything other than wipe down a bar counter. Bettis is still a remarkable presence, and she makes the most of her small moments, but the script simply doesn’t give her much to work with. She and Nelson have great chemistry, which makes the Torb and Lucille scenes sing, but it’s frustrating to see an actor of Bettis’s caliber have so little to do. Arquette is given more to work with in the film, and with his infectious energy, he carries Ghosts of the Ozarks on his back whenever he’s onscreen. 

I mentioned above that the film seems uninterested in its horror elements. Though it commits to them during the ghost scenes themselves⸺the cinematography during the sequences where eerie red smoke heralds the ghosts’ arrival is particularly striking⸺the surrounding scenes of James acclimating to life in Norfork don’t hold enough connective tissue to the ghostly scares to convince the viewer that this is one cohesive story. It’s an odd tonal mishmash that undercuts the impact of third act reveals that might have otherwise brought the disparate elements of the film together in a thematically satisfying way. 

Ghosts of the Ozarks is a small production that was obviously a labor of love. Co-directors Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne Long sport multiple credits: Glass composed the film’s music, while Long served as production designer and co-wrote the film with Sean Anthony Davis and Tara Perry. For her part, Perry did the film’s casting and also stars as Annie, one of Norfork’s designated hunters who lives outside the walls of the town. That obvious love and belief in the project from its creators makes it all the more unpleasant to report that Ghosts of the Ozarks is an aimless film that doesn’t give its talented cast enough to do and doesn’t know what to do with its themes. The potential is there, but, like its titular wraiths, Ghosts of the Ozarks is ultimately a shadow of what could have been.