Chattanooga FF: The Lonely Man with a Ghost Machine: The Imperfect Grief that Haunts Us

The last man on Earth after a global catastrophe finds himself questioning his purpose and sanity as both his dead wife and a mysterious stranger confront him with his past, his present, and whatever future might remain in the wastes of a dead world.

REVIEW:

The director, Graham Skipper’s The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine is his ode to grief, and loneliness. Like grief itself, the movie can feel genuine and gratuitous.

Skipper plays Wozzek, who retreats to a cabin in the woods after an apocalyptic event kills his wife, Nellie (Christina Bennett Lind.) At night, a mysterious voice creature with lupine features called The Deleterian (Paul Guyet as the death voice) haunts and interrogates him through a closed front door. In the morning, a friend cum therapist (also Guyet) who exists only as a conscience on prerecorded cassette tapes keeps him occupied- until it’s time to conjure his wife’s apparition on his self-invented ghost machine.

The claustrophobic feel of the cabin, along with the intercutting of black and white and color footage, the hand held camerawork, increases the sense of insanity happening. His loneliness and grief shine through the darkness. His ghost machine is the only connection to something real and valuable- something that exists entirely in the past, his wife, standing mutely, awkwardly silent for most of the film, until it/she erupts into vivid reenacted snippets of his own trauma memories that are never what he imagined to be.

The story is simple and yet has narrative power. The cinematography manages to summon a lot of beauty in the grain. Skipper and Lind act the hell out of their characters, with Guyet providing suitably creepy alternating soothing and reassuring voice work. Their interplay, their emotional complexity sells their interactions totally In a sense, Ghost Machine is trying to recreate the Covid anxiety and isolation everyone felt a few years back. The film has all the power of a survivor having imagined guilt conversation with their passed on loved ones.

Unfortunately, it’s also predicable. All the anxiety, grief, drama gets overextended. The monster outside is a paper mache disappointment. The limited budget severely hurts the execution. It doesn’t dare to exploit universal fears. It’s just content to tug at them for dramatic effect. And it always giving away its ending. The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine needs just more than what is expected.

The Lonely Man With a Ghost Machine gets a 3.0/5 or a B. It’s being shown as a part of the Chattanooga Film Festival that runs virtually from June 21-28.