David Lowery is a faithful director: after directing many shorts, he pens in 2013 the noteworthy Ain't Them Bodies Saints, with, already, two actors from A Ghost Story (Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck), as well as Daniel Hart as the music composer. Then Lowery works with Hart again in 2016 on a Disney production (Pete’s Dragon). Despite appearances, A Ghost Story isn’t quite a horror movie, as it mostly deals with mourning. It tells the story of a man (C) who dies in a traffic accident and whose spirit is present, powerless, during his widow’s grief (M). The role of music is essential in the dramaturgy, as it allows M to keep an emotional bond with her late husband. Released by Milan Music, Daniel Hart’s score is both terrifying and moving. The emotion is particularly tangible in tracks such as Thesaurus Tuus and Whatever Hour You Woke, which evoke with a quiet strength the now-abstract intimacy between the deceased and his widow. As for horror, it expresses itself in titles like Sciunt se Esse Mortui and most of all Gentleman Caller, in which the composer creates anguish with, notably, synthesizers, dissonant chords, atonal pianistic interventions, as well as a clarinet playing in the bass register. Let’s not forget that Daniel Hart is the author of the music of The Exorcist TV show. In some respects, this soundtrack evokes the melancholic and scary synthetic tracks from the compositions of director/composer John Carpenter, one of the major references of Lowery. Indeed, the final track (Safe Safe Safe) includes a drum machine that isn’t so different from the ones used by Carpenter in New York 1997. This is with this theme in major mode—thus more open and optimistic than the others—that ends this new collaboration of one of the most promising composer-director duo of the moment. But Hart isn’t only a movie composer. He’s also a musician flirting with pop, since he has worked as a violinist and composer among various pop-rock projects (notably St. Vincent). In the soundtrack of A Ghost Story, Daniel Hart’s two “activities” merge together as, here and there, he has reused and tinkered a song that he had composed for his band Dark Rooms (I Get Overhelmed). It’s an approach that echoes the one from the widowed character—M completely and tirelessly appropriating C’s memory. It’s worth noting that this movie has won the Jury Prize at the 2017 Deauville American Film Festival. © NM/Qobuz