Review of I Am a Ghost

I hate to disparage independent films that are attempting to do something "against the grain" in contemporary horror. I appreciate that "I Am A Ghost" is attempting to be a more intelligent, dialog driven film than the usual horror drivel, but Its many flaws compel me to write something to balance out the reviews I saw which, preposterously, likened it to Kubrick, Bergman and Hitchcock, or even "Lake Mungo." Beyond some interesting applications of After Effects, there is very little style, let alone Kubrick's. The only thing that can be compared to Bergman is the furniture. There is nothing the least bit Hitchcock about any of it. All in all, it feels like the first project of some competent filmmakers with good taste but not particularly good writing skills. Worse, it suffers from some basic logic problems and apparent anachronisms that, rather than elevating it into something fantastic or dream-like, are simply distracting. When did the main character die? The fashion and interior decoration in the ghost's remembered vision of the house (which is inexplicably the same furniture that exists in the clairvoyant's future time-line...did all future residents of the house just keep the same furniture, including the carpet on which an insane woman was stabbed to death?) appears to be from the late 19th century or even earlier. And yet the character listens to radio from the 1930s and there is a reference to electro convulsive therapy which didn't happen in the States until at least the 1940s. Perhaps this can be explained with some alternate interpretation of the ending, but any clues leading to that explanation would be so obscure that even a fan of Bergman would find it baffling. Add to this a ridiculously humorous "monster" (a nude man in gray body paint with a face manipulated by computer into something the Japanese might have been bored by twenty years ago), dialog that confuses awkward formality for intelligence, and moments such as the villain, in response to the heroine's prayers, menacingly proclaiming "Your god is dead," (shades of "Hellraiser), and it begins to become clear that this is, in fact, not the "original," "artsy," "sophisticated" movie that it's being represented as in reviews. Even the plot is nothing new to anyone with passing knowledge of ghost stories. Don't get me wrong, this isn't absolute trash, but if you are an intelligent film fan looking for something sophisticated and original, wait until it's on Netflix...