GHOST WORLD

Enid and Rebecca are two high school graduates thrust into real life in GHOST WORLD. Enid (Thora Birch of AMERICAN BEAUTY) is the outsider who desperately wants someone to understand and love her. Rebecca (THE HORSE WHISPERER) is her best friend growing distant because she can adjust to life’s responsibilities and demands much better than Enid. Right away, Rebecca is able to get a job and considers moving into an apartment while Enid struggles with a remedial art class and coping with an unhappy home.

The two bored teenagers decide to play a prank on a lonely, unattractive man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) who desires a romantic relationship with a woman. Feeling sorry for the older man, Enid befriends Seymour and helps him get a date with an attractive woman. Eventually, Enid realizes she has feelings for Seymour and spends the night with him. This disrupts her life further (and Seymour’s) and accurately demonstrates that immorality is more tantalizing than satisfying.

Frustrated with her own lack of identity, Enid constantly changes hair styles and clothes in search of her true self. She alternately ridicules and sympathizes with “misfits, jerks and dorks” by explaining to Rebecca that, “those are our people.” It is sad to see Enid and Seymour acknowledge that they cannot relate to “99 percent of humanity,” yet they desperately long for love and trustworthiness in their lives.

While Rebecca’s life stabilizes, Enid’s spirals down toward self-destruction. Unsatisfied with the direction of her directionless life, Enid ultimately decides to “leave town.” In the movie, her actions (catching an unscheduled bus on a street without bus service) are merely a metaphor for her suicide.

GHOST WORLD is a poignant look at the harsh reality many people face after their structured school life ends. It reminds viewers of the pain of a godless life and shows a lost world in need of a Savior. GHOST WORLD is filled with misfit, lonely people and, sadly, there are no redemptive characters or options shown in the story. Ironically, the only references to God and Jesus are through the characters cursing. Though cleverly crafted, GHOST WORLD offers little hope (other than advising people to conform to the strains of career and existence) and sends a terrible message to society: that suicide is justifiable and inevitable for those who cannot fit into real life.