Movie Substrate · Film
High Spirits (1988)
★ 5.8 · 248 ratings on TMDB
He's an American. She's a ghost. Vacation romances are always a hassle.
When a hotelier attempts to fill the chronic vacancies at his castle by launching an advertising campaign that falsely portrays the property as haunted, two actual ghosts show up and end up falling for two guests.
DirectorNeil Jordan
The emergence reading
In High Spirits, consciousness is carried by the dead — a plane of “haunted castle tourism”. The story fights on E8/E9 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing love, grief, tradition, mortality, consumerism.
↷ the deadIElovegrieftraditionmortalityconsumerism
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
Also hides consciousness here
Other films that move a human interior onto the same kind of thing.
Corpse Bride (2005)consciousness in the dead · spirit underworld
Over Her Dead Body (2008)consciousness in the dead · afterlife purgatory
Always (1989)consciousness in the dead · spirit realm
A Ghost Story (2017)consciousness in the dead · spectral house
Swiss Army Man (2016)consciousness in the dead · sentient corpse odyssey
The Lovely Bones (2009)consciousness in the dead · in‑between afterlifeSame subject, different mask
The same preoccupations carried by a different kind of thing — grief told through the dead, an animal, a machine.
The Book of Life (2014)consciousness in abstractions · love, mortality
The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)consciousness in animals · grief, love
Wish Dragon (2021)consciousness in monsters · love, mortality
Toy Story 2 (1999)consciousness in objects · consumerism, mortality
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)consciousness in monsters · love, tradition
Aladdin (1992)consciousness carried elsewhere · love, tradition
