Ghost World (2001)
Ghost World arrived in 2001 at an interesting moment for American independent cinema, when a small wave of adaptations from alternative comics were making their way onto screens with varying degrees of fidelity to their source material. This one draws from Daniel Clowes's serialised comic of the same name, which ran in his anthology series Eightball throughout the 1990s before being collected as a standalone volume. Clowes co-wrote the screenplay alongside director Terry Zwigoff, which goes some way to explaining why the film retains the comic's particular brand of deadpan alienation rather than softening it for a mainstream audience. The production was a genuinely international affair, pulling together backing from Mr. Mudd, Granada Productions, Capitol Films, Advanced Medien and Jersey Shore, a coalition of UK, US and German money that gave Zwigoff a modest but workable budget and, crucially, enough creative latitude to make something quite unusual.
Zwigoff was something of an unlikely figure to be adapting a comic about disaffected teenage girls. He had made his name with Crumb (1994), the documentary portrait of underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, a film that was praised for its refusal to flinch from its subject's more troubling qualities. That same unwillingness to flatter or reassure carries over into Ghost World, and it is worth noting that the film earned Clowes and Zwigoff an Academy Award nomination for their adapted screenplay, one of those cases where the industry acknowledges the craft while the wider public remains largely indifferent. The story follows Enid and Rebecca, two sharp-tongued school leavers drifting through the gap between adolescence and whatever comes next, who pull a prank on a lonely record collector called Seymour, with consequences that pull at the seams of their friendship. Scarlett Johansson plays Rebecca, still relatively early in a career that would soon take a very different direction (I also reviewed her 2013 work in Under the Skin, a film that sits at quite the other end of the tonal spectrum). Steve Buscemi takes the role of Seymour, and his casting is one of the film's more interesting decisions: he had spent much of the 1990s playing figures of menace or absurdity, and here he is asked to play something considerably more melancholy. Brad Renfro and Illeana Douglas round out the principal cast in supporting roles, Douglas in particular bringing a dry, knowing quality to her scenes as an art teacher.
Cinematographer Affonso Beato shoots the film in a palette that feels washed out by design, the American suburban landscape rendered in bleached yellows and faded signage, as though the world itself has been left out in the sun too long. There is a visual consistency to the framing that suits the story's sense of stasis: wide, slightly airless compositions that make the characters look small against the blank backdrops of diners, record shops and bus stops. David Kitay's score sits quietly beneath proceedings, leaning on acoustic textures and the period blues and jazz recordings that Seymour collects, so the music functions almost as characterisation rather than commentary. The editing, handled by Carole Kravetz Aykanian and Michael R. Miller, favours an unhurried rhythm that mirrors the characters' own formless summer. Whether that pacing reads as purposeful restraint or as drift is, perhaps, the central question the film poses to anyone watching it. For a companion piece on another film that trusts its audience to sit with ambiguity and silence, see also my piece on Nomadland. And if you want something from a similar coming-of-age, misfit-comedy corner of the map, I covered Hunt for the Wilderpeople not long ago, which handles the odd-couple dynamic with considerable warmth.
I have sat through a fair few coming-of-age stories and teen buddy movies over the years, and I am sorry to say Ghost World did not measure up to any of them.
A good deal of my problem was Enid herself. Thora Birch plays her as prickly and sardonic, which I gather is rather the point, but I found her grating and hard to like, and when you cannot warm to the person the whole film is built around, you are fighting an uphill battle from the off.
The others fare better. Scarlett Johansson is perfectly fine as Enid's friend, and Steve Buscemi is as dependable as ever, the kind of actor who lifts anything you drop him into. But I spent much of the film unsure what it was even trying to be. A comedy? I did not laugh. A romance? If so, a strange and muted one. The writing seemed to wander without ever arriving anywhere, and while I accept that the drift may well be deliberate, that did not make it any more satisfying to sit through.
What sealed it for me is that this ground has been covered so much better elsewhere. Watch Booksmart or Bottoms and you get essentially the same premise, young women working out who they are, handled with far more wit, warmth and purpose. Set against those, Ghost World feels flat and aimless.
Two and a half stars. It is not without its admirers and I can half see what they respond to, but it left me cold, and I would steer anyone towards those other two long before this.
Ghost World occupies a particular niche: the kind of film that has accumulated a devoted cult following precisely because it refuses to make itself easy to like. For those who recognise themselves in Enid's prickliness or share her contempt for comfortable conformity, the film clearly lands with some force. For others, the deliberate flatness and the episodic, unresolved structure will feel less like artistic choice and more like a film that simply declines to do the work of connecting with its audience. Critically it was well received on release, and the screenplay nomination is a marker of genuine industry respect. Whether that respect translates into an enjoyable 111 minutes is, as the rating here suggests, another matter entirely. Some films are easier to admire than to actually watch.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2001 | Watched: 2026-10-02
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Ghost World (2001) on YouTube
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