Spoilers ahead! This review will discuss elements of the film that could be considered spoilers. You have been warned.
If there’s one thing I’m going to love, it’s some hauntingly kooky queer art.
Holy Ghost is one of this year’s Day One (formerly Someday Stories) short films, written and directed by Hannah Lynch (she/her) and produced by Esaú Allemora (he/him). The film follows Ana through an episode of psychosis to dissect the intersection of queerness, religious trauma, and mental health.
This film is dense. The first time I watched it, I felt like I had only scratched the surface of what it all meant and it honestly left me feeling weird as shit. As I left the Hollywood Avondale after the Day One premiere, it felt like Holy Ghost had crawled beneath my skin and radiated eeriness across my whole body—in a good way!
There’s a lot to unpack in this film, but for the sake of this response piece, I’m going to primarily focus on Lynch’s use of religious imagery and text to portray and influence the gradual descent of Ana’s mental and emotional state. So without further ado: let’s get into some queer religious trauma.
The film’s opening image is a painting. Two figures intertwined in a cosmic spiral. At first glance, it looks like it could be two lovers dancing; however, upon further inspection, the torment becomes more apparent. One of the figures is distressed with flailing limbs and a wide mouth, while the other is stern and fiercely gripping the other. This intimate yet violent proximity is mirrored moments later by the roughhousing between Ana and her girlfriend, Mary. They tangle themselves in bed in a flurry of laughing, gripping, hugging, choking, playing, and biting.
The editing further cements the connection between Ana and the painting when a paintbrush adds shading to the distressed figure before cutting to Ana’s transfixed face. We then see that she has painted this on the ceiling above the bed she shares with Mary—not a great sign of the state of the relationship.
In the opening montage, we are also shown a painting of an unidentifiable figure about to land a deadly blow on a baby. If Lynch suggests a connection between Ana and her paintings, this one is particularly poignant in displaying Ana’s feelings from the get-go, even if it’s not immediately obvious in the first watch. At first, it appears that Ana could be the grown figure, the sacrificer, understandably making her girlfriend and mother uncertain about the safety of leaving her alone with her baby niece later in the film.
However, as we learn more about the root of Ana’s anxiety, it becomes clear that this painting foreshadows how she feels about her relationship with the divine. She feels like the baby: exposed, abused, and neglected by God, which is later explained as due to the trauma around growing up queer in an oppressive religious environment.
The paintings in the room are reminiscent of Christian paintings and stained glass in places of worship; the ceiling painting reminds me of specifically the Sistine Chapel. Other religious imagery litters her environment: a print of a young child praying, a lamb’s head with angel wings, soft lighting, Mary’s pristine all-white clothing, and the angelic clouds and stars on Ana’s shirt. A looming holy presence surrounds her. Yet, it doesn’t feel safe or serene. Instead, it’s unsettling and gnawing, especially when juxtaposed with the tension of Ana’s relationship and the explicitness of her self-harm. The visual holy domestic bliss is turned inside out, beginning the film’s eerie slow burn into mania.
The film then takes a sharp turn into a black-and-white dreamscape. The previous scene’s soft hues are starkly contrasted with the chiaroscuro lighting, where an angelic version of Mary carries Ana up a hill in darkness. Mary could be Ana’s literal saving grace but instead takes on a more ambivalent, merciless, and terrifying figure—reminiscent of a violent Old Testament or Book of Revelations type of angel. She blankly stares ahead and whispers to Ana what can only be described as an intrusive thought—that everyone can see how sad she really is.
In this moment, Mary, who soothed Ana in the scene before, turns monstrous, leaving flaming footprints on the ground as she carries Ana further and further away from the camera into the darkness. As she carries Ana further and further into a state of psychosis. This scene marks a distinct shift, where afterwards, Ana and the audience are no longer able to tell what is real or isn’t. Her interactions with Mary and her mother are distorted and interrupted by harsh line deliveries seemingly out of nowhere. It begins to feel as though she can’t trust the people around her anymore.
The film also divides itself into chapters through on-screen biblical quotes, each framing Ana’s state of mind at the time. The first is Ecclesiastes 4: 7: “Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun.” This verse is from the chapter titled ‘Oppression, Toil, Friendlessness,’ where the writer laments the pain humans afflict on themselves. It prefaces Ana’s mentality at the top of the film as feeling disillusioned by life. In addition to being at odds in her relationship with Mary, we see Ana engage in reckless behaviour like skipping her meds and self-harming.
The second verse appears before the dreamscape: “[T]he wicked flee, though no one pursues” from Proverbs 28: 1. As Ana’s psychosis worsens, as seen in the dream sequence, she is left feeling alienated from others. The film’s final chapter is prefaced by Psalm 22:7, “All who see me scoff at me. They mock me with parted lips; they wag their heads.” At this point, Ana is convinced that those in her life are turning against her: her mother would rather have Mary for a daughter, they are in cahoots behind her back and everyone is afraid of her. By using these biblical quotes to intercut the narrative, the film becomes as physically disjointed as Ana’s state of mind, which was a compelling use of form.
Holy Ghost’s use of shed blood effectively demonstrates how Ana’s mentality has physical stakes. With so much of the film feeling surreal and out of the confines of reality, the moments where we see her psychosis’s tangible consequences on Ana are profoundly impactful. While the cuticle-cutting scene got the biggest visceral reaction from the audience (which was very fun to be a part of), I was personally more affected by the moment when Ana bleeds on her baby niece’s white blanket. It was a quick moment, but the potent visual of bright red blood against pure white stuck in my mind as an image that further isolates Ana from her loved ones.
Through biblical imagery, in tandem with striking visuals and a killer score, Holy Ghost digs deep into how religion has been an oppressive force in Ana’s life from childhood. In a scene with her mother, she explains, “I don’t think [God] is a joke; I think he’s a dick. He let me worry about going to hell since I was tiny. How could it be more hellish than that?” perfectly summarising how her queerness, religious upbringing, and mental health are all interconnected, constantly influencing each other into her adulthood.
Holy Ghost stood out amongst the rest of the Day One films due to its surrealist approach and lack of a tidy or ‘happy’ ending. While the film’s closing image is one of blissful euphoria with Ana running down the street with melting ice cream cones in her hands, it ultimately unsettles the audience because we know this is a state of mania.
The film is a dreamlike exploration of how Ana’s religious trauma bleeds into and intertwines with her relationship and mental health as if she is being haunted by the divine. A holy ghost, if you will.
Overall, it was a trip to watch Holy Ghost on the big screen at the Hollywood; I was hyped to see an aspect ratio change that went w i d e. I hope to see more films like it in the Day One repertoire.
