Supernatural horror or drama centered on apparitions of the dead — sits between psychological thriller and metaphysical dread. Subgenre since 1890s.
The ghost film doesn't function as a pure horror genre; it's more of a narrative battlefield between the rational and the inexplicable. You're working with a tension that runs through the entire dramaturgy: Is what the viewer sees real or hallucination? Psychological breakdown or the actual presence of a deceased person? This uncertainty is the true craft of the ghost film.
In practice, this means a very deliberate play with presence through absence in visual design. You don't simply show a phantom in full lighting; you suggest it through movements in the background, reflections, temperature changes in lighting direction, and spatially shifting sound design. The classic trick: a door opening by itself, an empty staircase where footsteps suddenly echo. The best ghost films work with what is not shown, leaving the horror to the viewer's subconscious. Technically, this often means diffuse lighting, focus blur on the "supernatural," and subtle VFX instead of cheap CGI spooks.
The genre has hardly changed in its essence since the 1890s, but its ambition has. Early ghost films were often moralistic (the dead return to atone for a debt). Modern variations are less interested in the supernatural than in trauma and repression—the ghost becomes the external form of internal paralysis. Think of films that are less supernatural-spectacular and more about entering psychologically disturbing territory: Here, the ghost becomes a metaphor for unprocessed grief, guilt, loss.
Practically on set: Ghost films require extreme patience in staging. A single shot can take minutes because the "invisible" presence also needs to have a temporal effect in the edit—pauses are your tool. Work closely with your editing team; what seems harmless in the raw material can become genuine unease through rhythm and sound layering. This isn't effect cinema; it's suggestion cinema.