Ghost Time: Ghostly Temporalities in Mattie Do’s The Long Walk

by: Katarzyna Ancuta , February 6, 2024

Unlike neighbouring Thailand, Laos does not make many horror movies. Laotian folklore may overflow with ghosts and spirits, but the production of ghost films is generally discouraged. Laotian film censorship in this aspect is largely modelled on China, famous for its anti-superstition campaigns. After all, communist-leaning governments tend to find supernatural stories unnerving, seeing that ghosts often function as potent metaphors that can be interpreted in ways over which the state has no control. Turning a ghost story into a time travel narrative may seem like an innovative strategy to evade censorship, but ghosts have always been time travellers since their relationship with time is complicated.

Described frequently as ‘the first female filmmaker in Laos’ or ‘the first Lao horror director’, Mattie Do has proven time and again that she deserves to be treated as more than a novelty gimmick. Debuting in 2012 with Chanthaly, she has remained loyal to the genre, directing two more features: Dearest Sister (2016) and The Long Walk (2019), which is the focus of this audiovisual essay. Her films fit into a larger body of Southeast Asian horror productions that reorient local folklore to align it with moral norms imposed by official religion, in this case, Theravada Buddhism. They weave their narratives of ghostly returns within a Buddhist/animist framework that sees such hauntings in terms of karmic retribution and repetition while accepting the existence of ghosts and spirits as part of the mundane, everyday world.

In Buddhist ghost films, ghosts appear as the agents of karma, righting wrongs and restoring the balance of the universe. Buddhist ghosts are typically portrayed as conflicted figures, simultaneously pitiful and frightening. They are pitiful because they function as the epitome of suffering; their inability to let go of their earthly concerns and desires dooms them to their fate. In that sense, becoming a ghost can be seen as a failure to follow Buddhist teachings and a form of punishment. But then, ghosts also act as instruments of justice, serving as evidence that no evil deed goes unpunished, and as such, they are a terrifying force to be reckoned with. Animism, on the other hand, teaches us that ghosts and spirits are all around us, their existence should never be questioned. If Buddhist ghosts can be exorcised or put to rest once justice is restored, animist spirits remain with us at all times, seeing that they are part of the natural world. Buddhist ghosts are unable to let go of their past, but they are also part of an ongoing cycle of births, deaths and rebirths. Animist spirits are very much part of the present, but they are also simultaneously timeless and atemporal. Put together, they have a lot to teach us about time.

Western ghost stories alert us that the past is always significant as it affects the present: their protagonists are tormented by old secrets, children pay for the sins of their fathers, and the dead literally come back from the grave. In linear time, such a return of the past is seen as the utmost transgression, an aberration, as time is meant to flow only in one direction. Ghostly returns are portrayed through ‘the Gothic loop,’ a narrative device that sees the past intrude into the protagonist’s present through a repetitive re-enactment of unresolved traumas and distorts the usual perception of time by adding an element of circularity. Ghosts are at the heart of this loop, acting as symbolic reminders and literal witnesses of past traumas. Their intrusion into the protagonists’ lives throws time out of sync. They demand to be seen and heard, and they expect the living to take action. But how is the Gothic loop experienced within the non-linear temporality of a Buddhist/animist ghost film where repetition and circularity are taken for granted? The Long Walk, with its ingenious take on ghostly time travel, offers a unique insight into this question.

In the film, an ageing man and a young woman walk together on a country road. The girl seems to have lost her ability to speak, and the man prefers to keep silent. The two make for a rather odd pair, but they seem at ease with each other. We soon learn that the girl is a ghost. Killed in a road accident, her corpse left to decompose in the forest, she is destined to walk the road for eternity. Contrary to expectations, she does not turn into a vengeful spirit determined to hunt down the reckless driver that killed her, nor does she seem too upset with the boy who left her undiscovered. Without much interference, she simply keeps him company as he goes through his life, as if to remind us that we are all responsible for our karma. At first glance, the metaphor seems obvious – a ghostly companion shadowing the man on his journey from boyhood to old age makes for an image that resonates with a familiar warning: ‘As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be’. But the ghost is more than just a shadow. Throughout the film, she is shown walking towards, alongside, and away from the boy, the man, and sometimes both at once. If time is a road, she can travel it in both directions or refuse to stay on it altogether. For her companion, she herself becomes a path into the past and the future.

Timeless and unchanging, her existence is essentially continuous, alerting us to the fact that time is an illusion. When she finally breaks her silence, she addresses the man. She says, ‘I watched you grow up, grow old, and then die, circling around a thousand times’, and walks away to meet another version of the boy. She does not bother to wait for the man to die, nor does she expect him to return as a ghost. She will meet him another thousand times since he also exists in an infinite number of moments. Time, we are shown, is a ghost.