Hell hath no fury like disappointed horror fans, so please don’t go to “Light from Light” expecting a horror movie, which it most certainly isn’t. Rather, the film is a gentle, humanist drama that uses the idea of a haunted house to explore themes of doubt, wonder, and the search for meaning in the modern world.
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Sheila (Marin Ireland) might get called a “ghost hunter,” but she’s really a searcher and a listener in a broader sense, trying to reach beyond the noise and clamor of the everyday to hear something deeper speak to her, whether that’s God, the universe, or someone from beyond the grave. “Light from Light” is about signals that might not be heard, whether from a deceased person or from the people we talk to every day, and fittingly it starts with a voice carried across the air to foster an unlikely connection.
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Sheila is a single mom who works at a car rental agency in Tennessee, but is enough of a minor celebrity in the community of paranormal investigators to be interviewed on a local radio show. On the show, she explains how her interest began as a child when she experienced prophetic dreams; she’s doesn’t claim any certainty about what exactly happened or what it meant, but it was enough to fill her with an abiding curiosity about unexplained phenomena. Richard (Jim Gaffigan) hears the interview and reaches out to her through his pastor, asking Sheila to investigate his farmhouse, which has displayed unexplained events since his wife died in a plane crash a year prior. Refusing payment, Sheila investigates thoroughly, not only deploying cameras and sensors all over the house, but also getting Richard to open up about his relationship with his wife. She receives help from her teenage son Owen (Josh Wiggins) and his friend Lucy (Atheena Frizzel); Owen too is wrestling with the unknown, not asking out the obviously interested and compatible Lucy because of his uncertainty of what their futures hold.
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“Light from Light” takes place in a far different context from writer/director Paul Harrill’s debut feature, “Something, Anything,” an explicitly Christian search for meaning which ended in a Kentucky monastery, yet the two films share much of the same DNA, including a powerful sense of quiet and a belief that the most important things to look for in life can’t be shown on a movie screen.
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Ireland and Gaffigan both give strong performances, conveying far more than their characters can put into words. Their pursuit of signs from Richard’s late wife grows more poignant as they develop their own romantic chemistry. Richard doesn’t know what to feel; he’s mourning his wife, but the manner of her death revealed she was being unfaithful, and he’s hoping for some sign from his wife to clarify what he was to her. Despite wanting Richard to find closure, Sheila too wants to hear something, to validate her own intuition and time spent.
“Light from Light” eventually does contain a possible sign from beyond, but in the nature of such things, the sign is a fragment, open to interpretation. Harrill’s film is ultimately about accepting doubt and moving forward in life despite uncertainty. “Light from Light” is a quiet and modest film with big subjects on its mind and it will reward those viewers with the patience to listen to the faint wavelengths at the end of the dial. [A-]