From the new release Over Her Dead Body to the classic A Christmas Carol, Hollywood loves putting spirits in the material world. Here’s our collection of the best—and worst—characters off the slab and ready to gab.
OVER HER DEAD BODY (2008)
Eva Longoria Parker refuses to rest in peace when her boyfriend (Paul Rudd) moves on to another woman. Which wouldn’t be the first time the cinematic dearly departed didn’t stay departed. Here are 14 more examples—some scary, some funny, some heartbreaking, and some that we probably shouldn’t have dug up.
GHOST (1990)
Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze played Molly and Sam, hot-and-heavy romantics who are torn asunder when Sam is murdered by a duplicitous friend (Tony Goldwyn). Enter Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), a psychic hustler who, it turns out, actually can speak to the dead. She forms the bridge between worlds, allowing Sam to protect his grieving love and, finally, say goodbye.
THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)
Thanks to M. Night Shyamalan’s moody breakout thriller, ‘I see dead people’ was the phrase that captivated turn-of-the-millennium audiences. Haley Joel Osment played the wee lad who was cursed with the gift of being able to converse with spirits who haven’t left the earthly plane and Bruce Willis wisely underplayed the psychologist who taught him to embrace his gift.
STIR OF ECHOES (1999)
This Kevin Bacon thriller had the grave misfortune of opening a month after The Sixth Sense and was wholly dismissed as a result. Especially since Bacon played a ‘receiver’ who could see spirits as well as flashes of the future and the past.
THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)
Poor Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney). A young turn-of-the-century widow moves into a lovely seaside cottage only to find out that it’s haunted by a cantankerous, goateed sailor (Rex Harrison). As she melts away his abrasive facade, he melts her heart. Oh so sweet, it was turned into a TV show almost 20 years later, starring Knight Rider‘s Edward Mulhare.
STAR WARS: EPISODE VI—RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)
What’s a young Jedi—who only got the Cliffs Notes version of training before losing a hand to his evil dad—to do when he loses his way? Well, if you’re Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), you hit the swamps of Dagobah and talk to deceased mentors like Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness).
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (1991)
Full disclosure: I’ve never seen this, Anthony Minghella’s first feature. What can I say: I’m a dude who was 20 years old in ’91, and the last thing on my mind was sensitive British romance flicks about grieving women and the men who return from the dead to tend to them. But I’ll let Ty Burr, EW video critic emeritus, drop some supernatural science. ‘The pleasures of Truly, Madly, Deeply are many: the whimsical view of an afterlife where one finally has time to take those Spanish lessons, a sense for the fluidity of national and corporeal boundaries… and career-defining performances from Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson, the latter of whom makes sorrow, rage, and hope positively tactile.’
CASPER (1995)
Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci play a paranormal-expert widower and his precocious daughter who, after moving into an abandoned house, encounter the blanket-shaped Casper the friendly ghost—and his three not-so-friendly ghostly brethren. At 15, this was pretty much the last time Ricci could try and get away with playing a kid.
WHITE NOISE (2005)
This Michael Keaton thriller would have you believe there really is such a thing as Electronic Voice Phenomena—where the dead can be seen and heard in the static of TVs and radios. Who knows if it’s real—we just know that Keaton’s best ghost story was Tim Burton’s screw-loose masterpiece, Beetlejuice. Speaking of which…
BEETLEJUICE (1988)
Michael Keaton plays the ghost other ghosts turn to when they want the living out of their houses. Of course, Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam (Alec Baldwin) don’t know that once you summon Beetlejuice, getting rid of him is another matter entirely. Tim Burton brought a plasticine brilliance to this maniacal comedy, and Keaton has never, ever been better.
GHOST DAD (1990)
Okay, so it’s not as bad as Bill Cosby’s infamously horrible Leonard, Part Six, but it’s close. The Cos plays a widower who buys the farm in a taxi accident but manages to convince a paranormal scientist to send him back long enough to ensure that his three kids are provided for. Lots of mugging ensues. Watch at your own risk.
THE FRIGHTENERS (1996)
Before slipping down the hobbit hole into Middle Earth, Peter Jackson directed this odd little supernatural thriller-comedy-horror flick, which stars Michael J. Fox as a paranormal investigator who rolls with a posse of ghost buddies—they haunt the houses, Fox chases them away, everybody gets paid. Of course, the stakes rise, and all hell breaks loose. As tends to happen in this sort of picture.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951)
You know the drill: Miserly skinflint Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts (Christmas Past, Present, and Future) who show him the error of his ways. A classic, heartwarming Yuletide tale. But, dude, this old man is visited by the undead. Someday, someone will find the true horror in this little story.
TOPPER (1937)
Cary Grant and Constance Bennett play the Kerbys, a self-centered couple full of joie de vivre who, after a car wreck, find themselves fresh out of vivre. As ghosts, they decide to do one good deed, and give their stuffy old friend, Cosmo Topper (Roland Young), a lifestyle makeover. In other words, it’s Dead Eye for the Straight Guy.
HELLO AGAIN (1987)
The less said about Shelley Long’s suburban-housewife-who-dies-in-a-dreadful-chicken-ball-accident-but-is-ghostified-thanks-to-a-spell-cast-by-her-wacky-sister comedy the better. Seriously. I’m done.
Marc Bernardin, Entertainment Weekly
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