I Downloaded a Ghost (2004)
This film stars Ellen Page of X-Men 3 Sucks, or X-Men: The Last Stand as it's known in the states.
In this delightful children's story, Page wants to create a great haunted house. So she starts scouring the
Internet, looking for sites on ghosts, when she comes across "Ghosts Are Us," where you can download
a human soul.
Luckily for Page, a man dies a horrible death across town when he gets hit by a bus, and the Ghosts Are Us
site uses a cute animation to show that his soul is being robbed of his intended afterlife in Heaven as he's being
scanned into her home PC. Notice how the site also allows you to trade, sell, or rent human souls as well.
That's called a good business model.
This is all quite funny to watch, especially since the man's soul
is clearly suffering a lot in the process of being traded in an effort to increase site membership.
Both the ghost and Page's lives get turned upside down, because the ghost has no interest in the haunted house,
and his one regret about getting hit by a bus and dying is that this may hurt his chances of becoming a successful
standup comedian.
There's a whole plot about evil robbers and rich tycoons trafficking stolen artifacts that takes up most of the
film, but frankly, that's not very important.
The important thing is, the ghost eventually comes to terms with the fact that in America, he's just
a commodity, and that his immortal soul has no hope unless he participates in the economics of soul trafficking
that he was pulled into. Helping
both himself and Page, he realizes that he must be her haunted house attraction after all, and he starts doing
stand up comedy for guests coming to the house.
This wins Page the first place for haunted houses. Yay!
More importantly, though, once he acknowledges that the free market's laws are paramount, and he
performs his proper duty as a purchased slave soul, only then does he get to go to Heaven.
I love children's stories.
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