Blithe Spirit had its world premiere at the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival, and was released in the United Kingdom on 15 January 2021. The film received generally negative reviews from critics.
Plot summary
Successful playwright Charles Condomine is suffering from depression and writer's block. After a performance by popular medium Madame Arcati ends in fiasco, as a kind of publicity act, the medium performs a private séance at Charles's home and accidentally summons the spirit of Elvira, his deceased first wife.
Conflict follows as Elvira becomes jealous of Ruth, Charles's new wife, and attempts to drive her away. Charles now has to balance between the two women, and protect Ruth from Elvira as he is the only one who can actually see her.
The film premiered on 8 October 2020 at the Mill Valley Film Festival,[7] and was screened later in the same month at the San Diego International Film Festival.[8] The film was scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom on 1 May 2020, but was delayed to 4 September 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was then further delayed to 25 December 2020.[9] In November 2020, Sky acquired the British distribution rights, and the film was released on the Sky Cinema channel on 15 January 2021.[10]IFC Films distributed the film in the United States.[11]
In its opening weekend in the United States, the film grossed $98,100 from 239 theaters. It was also the most-rented title on the Apple TV's indie movie chart, and ninth overall.[12]
Critical response
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 29% based on 77 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "An indifferent adaptation of classic source material, Blithe Spirit puts a star-studded cast through the motions without capturing the story's screwball spark."[13] According to Metacritic, which sampled 16 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 26 out of 100, the film received "generally unfavorable reviews".[14]
