12 Curiosities that show how “Still Here” and “Ghost” are similar and equally emotional

If you grew up in the 1990s or 2000s, you must have been moved by the love story between a woman and a ghost in Ghost. More than that, he must have sighed with the clay vase scene and slowly danced with his crush to Unchained Melody.

Did you wake up nostalgia there? For it can be reawakened if you watch the Netflix movie I’m Still Here, which has the ability to bring the same experiences to the new generation. After all, the new film paid homage and brought back several elements present in Ghost.

Therefore, the awesome.club made a point of reviewing the two films in sequence to make this list of the things I’m Still Here and Ghost have in common, in addition to the hidden references in the new film.

In Ghost, the “girl” of the film is Molly, played by Demi Moore. She is a fine artist and, despite not being mentioned in the film, we can conclude that both she and her boyfriend are young adults. Already in I’m Still Here, the main actress is Joey King, who plays Tessa. Here the couple is made up of teenagers still in high school, which should please the new generation of passionate fans even more. Tessa is also an artist, but her hobby is photography.

Even with a good age difference, the resemblance between the actors is remarkable, but the coincidences stop there. In Ghost, Patrick Swayze plays Sam, a businessman who isn’t very romantic. Very different from Skylar, played by Kyle Allen in I’m Still Here: he’s an athlete, he works as a lifeguard, he’s smart, multilingual, tall, handsome and… romantic! In the film, he is much more prepared to live in a relationship than his girlfriend, unlike Sam in Ghost.

This difference in personalities between the couples in the films makes everything more interesting. In a scene in Ghost, when Molly demands that Sam say he loves her, he justifies “everyone says ‘I love you’ without meaning to.” Tessa also has a little argument with Skylar early on in the film, when she says that love stories always end and that’s what makes them beautiful. But Skylar doesn’t agree.

In many movies—and even in books and songs—saying “I love you” is a big step in a relationship. If you’ve ever watched Ghost, you’ll remember that this was a big question in the movie, as Sam just answered “ditto” every time Molly confessed. In I’m Still Here, it’s a little worse: when Skylar says he loves Tessa, she just doesn’t say anything!

The song Unchained Melody was so iconic for the couple Sam and Molly that it became the “Ghost song”. With Skylar and Tessa it couldn’t be different. The song chosen for the couple was Never Tear Us Apart, by Australian band INXS. This is really their song, one that reminds them of each other whenever they hear it, and even Tessa’s best friend knew that.

In Ghost, Sam manages to communicate with Molly through the medium Oda Mae Brown, initially a charlatan, but who turns out to actually be able to hear the dead. Oda is played by Whoopi Goldberg, who won three awards for her performance, including an Oscar. In Still I’m Here, it is Tessa who looks for a way to talk to her late boyfriend and meets Doris, a woman who specializes in supernatural phenomena.

Both films talk about grief and the way the protagonists deal with it. And one of these ways is to relive the happy moments with the loved one. In Ghost, Sam has to tell Oda Mae the couple’s most intimate memories, to convince Molly that the contact was real, and in the end they relive those moments. On the other hand, Tessa needed to revisit places where the couple lived the most memorable moments, to try to see the loved one and have a last contact before the final farewell.

Molly in Ghost doesn’t want to do anything else after losing her boyfriend. She doesn’t want to go out to be distracted and doesn’t even want to get rid of Sam’s belongings, no matter how small or insignificant they may be. When Oda Mae appears saying that she can hear Sam, she is slow to believe it. Tessa has an even more drastic attitude, mistreating her adoptive parents and, at one point, even giving up photography. She is introduced to Doris, but only decides to listen to her after several signals given by Skylar.

“It’s amazing, Molly, true love we take with us.” These are Sam’s last words in Ghost, after the farewell and before he finally goes to paradise. The message in I’m Still Here is not much different. After the couple, both in spirit, live some possibilities of happy endings and together, it is Tessa who says: “Love never dies”. Curiously, the catchphrases are said precisely by the characters who were reluctant to confess their love.

In a certain scene of I’m Still Here, Tessa is getting rid of her photography equipment. Her stepfather, trying to convince her not to do that, says that her mother used to start hobbies and give up. Then he lists a bunch of things she’s given up on, and ceramics among them. Just like Molly, who was a plastic artist who made ceramic sculptures.

Tessa gets a job at the city’s movie theater bomboniére, where she maintained a friendship with the owner. Towards the end of the film, in the only scene that shows her at work, we can see in the background a poster of Ghost — On the Other Side of Life. Since Tessa didn’t really believe that she could communicate with Skylar, we can conclude that she never watched this movie. She doesn’t know what she’s missing, does she?

I’m Still Here is not a sequel, a remake or a spin-off of Ghost, but an adaptation of the book of the same name, by author Marc Klein. In turn, Marc wrote the story based on an experience he had, when he lost his girlfriend in a car accident. The book was written at about the same time as the film’s screenplay, with actress Joey King chosen for the lead role.

Now we want to know what other novels from the 1990s and 2000s would you like to see repackaged for the new generation of fans to also wet the tissue?