Ghost World (2001)
Accentuate the negative.
Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls’ friendship.
In Ghost World, consciousness is carried by the dead — a plane of “haunted metropolis”. The story fights on E8/E13 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing loneliness, death, apocalypse, technology, memory.
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
The Matrix (1999)E8/E13 · rare rung · technology
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)E8/E13 · rare rung · technology
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)E8/E13 · rare rung · technology
Alien: Covenant (2017)E8/E13 · rare rung · technology
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)E8/E13 · rare rung · technology
Pixels (2015)E8/E13 · rare rung · technologyAlso bends a rule of reality
Other films that change a standing rule of their world — ranked first by those bending it at the same rung.
Her (2013)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)alters at E8 · same rung · rigorous
Oblivion (2013)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
Anomalisa (2015)alters at E8 · same rung · rigorous
Extinction (2018)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
Enter the Void (2010)alters at E8 · same rung · looseAlso hides consciousness here
Other films that move a human interior onto the same kind of thing.
Pulse (2006)consciousness in the dead · digital afterlife
Pulse (2001)consciousness in the dead · haunted network
Coco (2017)consciousness in the dead · afterlife of memory
The Sixth Sense (1999)consciousness in the dead · spectral afterlife
Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)consciousness in the dead · the further
Volver (2006)consciousness in the dead · magical realist villageSame subject, different mask
The same preoccupations carried by a different kind of thing — grief told through the dead, an animal, a machine.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)consciousness in machines · memory, technology
9 (2009)consciousness in objects · memory, technology
Monster House (2006)consciousness in objects · death, memory
The World's End (2013)consciousness in machines · apocalypse, technology
Spaceman (2024)consciousness in aliens · loneliness, memory
Shocker (1989)consciousness carried elsewhere · death, technology
