Creeping out of the grave, oozing ectoplasm, rattling chains, seeking vengeance — ghosts are classified as “terrifying” for a lot of very good reasons. But sometimes, you encounter a movie ghost who’s just, like, really bad at being scary and is therefore incapable of haunting anyone.
In honour of Netflix’s new horror comedy We Have a Ghost, which stars David Harbour as an apparition who can’t speak but still makes the Anthony Mackie-led family that moves into his old home into a) social media superstars and b) government targets (neither of which are good), here are 10 movies featuring undead entities who didn’t get the memo on how to be effective ghosts.
The Maitlands, Beetlejuice
At first they don’t even realise they’re dead, much less ghosts who’re supposed to be haunting their own house — something they prove to be terrible at, even with their own Handbook for the Recently Deceased and the gruff encouragement of their afterworld caseworker. Fear only enters the picture when they ill-advisedly involve the bio-exorcist Beetlejuice, and things get even worse when a bumbling human gets their mitts on the Handbook.
The Stewarts, The Others
The Others is indeed a scary movie, but the family it introduces us to has a similar problem as the Maitlands. They suspect that their house is haunted, but they don’t realise they’re the ghosts in the equation, and it takes the entire movie for them (and most members of the audience) to figure it out. The same doesn’t go for the family’s live-in domestic workers, who are also ghosts but are fully aware of that fact, though they creepily keep that information to themselves.
Dr. Malcolm Crowe, The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense has a lot in common twist-wise with The Others, but even if Bruce Willis’ lonely-doctor-guy character did realise he was a ghost earlier in the movie, he still wouldn’t have scared anyone. Even the kid who can see dead people, and is shown to be visibly shaken by many of his spectral encounters, has no issue palling around with him like he’s not from beyond the grave.
Sir Simon de Canterville, The Canterville Ghost
The great Charles Laughton stars as a 17th century aristocrat who refuses to engage in an unjust duel — for which he’s branded a coward and bricked into an alcove in his manor house, doomed to be an unquiet spirit until he’s freed by a worthy act of bravery. The story then shifts to World War II, when Sir Simon encounters a soldier that’s his direct descendent and, hopefully, just the guy to break the curse. That is, if Sir Simon can overcome certain limitations, like being a ghost so un-scary he’s targeted for mockery, and being way too pushy about wanting his freedom.
Wayne, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
If you’re a sleazeball in life, that’ll follow you beyond the veil — at least, that’s what happens to Michael Douglas’ horny-old-man character, the Jacob Marley figure in this very loose riff on A Christmas Carol. He’s certainly shudder-inducing, but not in the way most ghost stories intend.
Elliott Hopper, Ghost Dad
Bill Cosby comedies aren’t exactly in demand these days, even those directed by Sidney Poitier, but in this one he plays a car accident victim who thinks he’s a ghost waiting around to be let into the afterlife — but is actually a spirit who somehow jumped out of his comatose body in a moment of fright. So in addition to not being scary, he’s not even a real ghost!
Elizabeth Masterson, Just Like Heaven
A rom-com take on the same plot device that powers Ghost Dad, in which Reese Witherspoon plays a similarly confused, similarly not-scary faux-ghost… who’s actually a car accident victim whose spirit has drifted away from her comatose body.
Ghost, Hamlet
Take your pick from any of the cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy; reliably, the ghostly King Hamlet shows up, tells his son he’s been murdered by his brother, tut-tuts about his widow marrying said brother, demands his son avenge him, and then peaces out… only to show up later to tell his son he’s not doing a good job with the whole vengeance thing. Maybe “incompetent” isn’t quite the right word to describe this behaviour, but why couldn’t Pops use his supernatural powers to help his son move the needle a little?
Corporal Benjamin Block, Winchester
Not to be confused with the Supernatural TV show or its current spin-off, Winchester bungles a great real-life setting — San Jose, California’s fascinating Winchester Mystery House — and shoehorns a made-up ghost story into the eccentric life of Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren), who hardly needed any fictional embellishments on her actual biography. Jason Clarke plays a doctor who’s tending to Sarah; his backstory is that he nearly died after being shot, and then kept the bullet as a souvenir. This comes in handy when the main baddie — the furious ghost of a Civil War soldier — reveals he’s terrified of said bullet, and it turns out to be just the thing to exorcise him from the house. That’s not the way ghosts work, is it?
Thirt13n Ghosts
Not the 1960 William Castle classic. This is the remake boasting the unlikely assemblage of Tony Shalhoub, F. Murray Abraham, Matthew Lillard, and Shannon Elizabeth, as well as the promised array of ghosts — rendered in CG that looked silly even in 2001, and will make you scream (with laughter) today.