Can a Ghost unmask a Criminal?

by rogerco on Tue 23rd Mar 2021.

An interesting setting (isolated Scottish community) and well constructed to draw you in. Another work dealing with the world orld through the eyes of a troubled child - there seems to be a plethora of these that I'm reading/seeing recently: Dark, What Lies Beneath, Rocks, Ratcatcher, Where the Crawdads Sing... .

We are primed for the ghostly elements by the opening on Halloween, although they arrive with a bang of a full-on appearance experience by the to main protagonists, Lauren and her Dad Niall. The interior life of the child Lauren is convincing, but her Dad less so - after 10 years is he really still as dysfunctional in his reaction to Christine's (the wife/mother) disappearance. Maybe so given the limited opportunities for emotional growth in a small community, and the English tendency to repress these things plus the Scottish tendency to find comfort in alcohol (both overused cliches, but none the less true).

The eventual uncovering of the original crime is not a complete surprise, the perpetrator had been flagged as a bit dodgy, so we are left with the ghost story element - was it all in the child's imagination forcing itself into the real world? Is there something to ponder on here about the relationship between consciousness and physical reality - can a troubled psyche manifest in or influence reality towards a desired outcome - Naill's unblocking, or was that just down to the exposure of the crime?