Casey Affleck Haunts Rooney Mara In New Trailer For A Ghost Story

We've seen quite a few visually-striking ghosts over the years—from the bloody corpses of The Sixth Sense to the grotesque monsters of Crimson Peak—but director David Lowery prefers to keep things simple. In his fourth feature film, A Ghost Story, the titular spirit is just a guy wearing a sheet over his head. Sure, that might sound comical, but there's nary a laugh (or scream) to be found in the new trailer for Lowery's movie.

According to the official plot synopsis (via Collider), this quiet drama focuses on "a white-sheeted ghost (Academy Award-winner Casey Affleck)" who "returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife (Academy Award-nominee Rooney Mara), only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away." Yeah, we're definitely going to shed a few tears watching this one, especially when Affleck "embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life's ineffable questions and the enormity of existence."

As for the trailer itself, it's hauntingly beautiful (pun intended) and brings to mind Lowery's earlier films, such as Ain't Them Bodies Saints and Pete's Dragon. The movie is scheduled for release on July 7, and chances are pretty good we'll have a serious awards contender on our hands. After all, when the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, pretty much every critic on the planet immediately fell in love with this mournful mood piece.

On top of that, A Ghost Story is being distributed by A24, the same company responsible for releasing pictures like Room, The Lobster, and Moonlight. If A Ghost Story is even half as good as those films, then David Lowery's new movie will certainly steal the number one spot on several "best of the year" lists. But while you're waiting to watch Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara in theaters, be sure to check out some of the other movies that are going to blow everyone away in 2017.