GHOSTLIGHT: A Review
by Karen Pecota

Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson | USA| 2024

Award winning filmmakers, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, had ambitions to make a film called MOUSE once its screenplay was placed on The Black List—an online site ranking the most liked screenplays in Hollywood that have not been produced. O’Sullivan shares that MOUSE was green lit with all the details in place, including a big budget and complicated logistics and casting; but it was put on hold due to the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes. During MOUSE’S development, O’Sullivan completed a script she wrote called GHOSTLIGHT, which Thompson felt like the timing to make that film instead was right.

O’Sullivan uses her background as a theater actor to focus on a screenplay that centers around a small-town community thespian group, a family, some humor, and a lot of healing. Compelling is her underlying storyline of the loss of a child to suicide and how one family chooses to deal with the tragedy within the context of the arts—a play.

The film’s title, GHOSTLIGHT, refers to the single bulb that theater companies leave on when a stage has gone dark—a practical habit that, over the years, has become a well-known theatrical superstition.

The threads of superstitions within a theatrical context are very real, and O’Sullivan skillfully presents a balance between humor and seriousness where tragedy exists.

A special note is that the main family characters (Keith, Tara, and Katherine) are in real life a family working in the film and theater industry. A remarkably talented crew!

Synopsis:

Dan Mueller (Keith Kupferer), a blue-collar father and husband trying to cope with the suicide of his son, is spiraling downward emotionally, in an unhealthy state, which affects his wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen) and daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer). The distance between the three widens the longer Dan is unwilling to receive counseling. Loneliness and tensions rise over mundane life occurrences.

Dan and Sharon pour their energy into their unruly teenage daughter, Daisy, by supporting her ambition to be an actress. A talent they know she is capable of mastering, but when she wants to talk about her brother’s absence, their good parenting skills are far from present.

Every day Dan walks by an old, empty theater, looks in the window and walks on by. One day he notices people coming and going, and encounters Rita (Dolly De Leon). She invites Dan to join the small community theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Resistant at first, until he meets the diverse thespians, who become Dan’s lifeline to move forward with his grief, while keeping his involvement a secret from his wife and daughter, until Daisy finds him out.