GHOSTS OF GASTOWN

A child grieving the loss of her dad suddenly finds herself accosted by ghosts who are demanding rescue from a mysterious threat.

Hardly has 12-year-old Hope arrived with her widowed mom—a popular horror novelist, appropriately enough—in their new apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, than a ghost she comes to dub Victorian Dead Girl, or VDG for short, steps out of the closet in a flood of spectral water to make cryptic demands. Ever since the accident that claimed her father’s life, Hope has become used to seeing ghosts, but in their historic Gastown neighborhood, she finds herself not only encountering scarily urgent spirits but also up against a supernatural devorator, who’s eating ghosts before moving on to the living. Worse yet, the devorator turns out to be the pet of an even more terrifying, scythe-wielding reaper who’s actually after Hope. This piling on of villains and threats may add additional drama to the climactic face-off but at times feels overdone. Hope, who’s cued white, befriends her new neighbor Oliver, a French Canadian boy with two moms who presents Black and who also has second sight. A whiplash-inducing reveal involves Hope’s mother, who previously sent her to a therapist for her supposed visions and reacts with hostility to any talk of ghosts from Oliver or his Maman, who’s a medium.

Short on logic but long on spooky spectral encounters.