Strictly average movie

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I watched this movie as part of the Documentary Edge Festival in Auckland today. I absolutely loved it and can't rate it highly enough. It will definitely appeal to those who are already converted to the idea that animals are treated as another nation, which we appear to be at war with. However, I think it will also appeal to others who try to understand the world around them and why there are so many people so very passionate about exposing the horrors of animal exploitation. We constantly complain about how the media keep us ill informed of the real issues, yet so many people are not interested in viewing any images that reflect the horrors of reality. This documentary shows the difficulty of engaging the mainstream media in such issues and through the eyes of someone who has chosen to dedicate her life to exposing reality in an attempt to get people to change how they perceive and interact with animals. We also get introduced to a range of very unique animal personalities, such as a rescue cow and her calf, and a rescue pig and her gorgeous rambunctious piglets- they all live in an animal sanctuary now. We also get to lock eyes with those who are not so fortunate- and we know that their fate lies with changes in market attitudes, such as not buying fur, not eating meat, not visiting dolphinariums or zoos. It seems like a massive challenge; to change consumer behaviours that are so ingrained in people's psyche but at least Jo-Anne McArthur is trying.

This film puts you at the heart of animal cruelty by humans and those that are fighting for them. It helps to establish a connection and understanding as to why so many people want to help the voiceless. You get to see in their eyes in such a profound and clear way. You feel for them and the pain they endure. I can't think of a more effective way to help people relate to those of us that have dedicated our lives to ending the exploitation of innocent animals. The film is not all sad and depressing though. You also get to see those that have benefited from animal rights advocates through clips of animals that have been rescued. It is so joyful seeing the rescued animals running and playing in a happy and safe environment.

Ghosts is one of the most, if not the most, beautifully filmed and constructed documentaries I've ever seen. And it is surely the most moving and powerful film I've ever seen regarding our complex, and frankly shameful and abhorrent, relationships with the sentient beings among us, hidden from us, that we call animals. To be able to look through director Liz Marshal's and protagonist Jo-Anne MacArthur's lenses into the eyes of beings whom we know to be fully present and to possess the senses and faculties to know and experience deeply the unfathomable suffering we impose on them for the most fleeting, trifling and unjustifiable purposes imaginable is an experience not soon to be forgotten and one which should be widely shared and experienced. The astonishingly beautiful sanctuary scenes are a source of great joy and hope for a future of compassion, empathy and liberation for the ghosts and for all beings.

Ghosts is a film that offers the hope of attracting those who care and those who don't, a documentary that will embolden the converted while likely influencing more to join the choir (or at least check out the song book). It is a documentary that refuses to preach, instead opting for a beautifully constructed homage to the rest of our kingdom, spilling over with a unique and thoughtful cordiality that is born out of unmitigable love, respect and understanding.The documentary is a refreshing departure from its more rational-minded predecessors that throw facts and data at us while barraging audiences with violent sounds and images of slaughter and torture. Ghosts instead confronts with the unforgettable grace of animals many of us so easily shut out from our daily thoughts, as industrial capitalism distantly spins its cogs of exploitation on farms, in labs and factories and abattoirs.These are the ghosts – the winged, the four-legged and the otherwise objectified and disgraced cousins gasping for life below us on the commodity/food chain.Marshall doesn't throw the sixties wrench into the cogs of the machine, screaming from a mantle of righteousness that what we are doing is morally, ethically, ecologically wrong. Instead, she introduces proximal empathy into the abysmal space between consumers and capital with a powerful effect that hits both the mind and heart with an enduring resonance.Through the various actions and efforts of the very talented and committed photographer Jo-Anne McArthur the film quietly sneaks into the obscured and horrific spaces of mink farms and other places where animals have had their essence as sentient beings barbarically debased into commodity form, lingering just long enough to occlude forgetting.Both the photographs and cinematography in the film are stunning, and viewing on a small screen should be avoided – Ghosts is a visual delight, despite the sometimes difficult scenes that unfold. A confident direction shines through in this skilfully shot and tightly edited doc that is also audibly adorned with an awesome score and soundscape. The beauty of the film's artifice somehow does not aestheticize suffering, nor create Hallmark images of the animals documented – instead the richness of sound and images helps us through tough spaces, punctuating moments we might otherwise wish to shut out or alternately, not have registered as worthy of contemplation.Yet we do not spend too much time in the most violent of animal oppression spaces, and by focusing on the beauty and individuality of the many animals (who have names and personalities) that McArthur documents, including and crucially the relationships between committed humans and the broken and discarded, Ghosts brings us in close and personal and squeezes tight.It's a warm and inviting embrace that the film offers, one that builds empathy for these creatures over its 90 minutes, and it doesn't relinquish after the closing credits.I didn't feel yelled at or schooled, but I do feel implicated and educated. To the benefit of Marshall and others who worked on this film (and by extension, to McArthur) those feelings of implication and elucidation are wrapped in beauty, love and understanding.If I sound warm and fuzzy it's because this film's compassion and sensitivity are comforting sensations that just might be the right mixture needed to deliver a documentary on animal rights that transcends the earlier discussed divide and invites everyone in without compromising its politics, while not shutting out others, in spite of its politics.