--- description: Find out why "Ghost Town" is on TIME's list of the 50 most underappreciated movies of the 21st Century. title: 'Ghost Town' Is on The 50 Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a1046441faa0745/6998cbd666d4e308d8cbd0e0/Underappreciated-Movies-Ghost-Town.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Feb 04, 2026 # _Ghost Town_ David Koepp by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/) ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic  Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear in "Ghost Town", 2008. Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear in "Ghost Town", 2008.Paramount / Everett Collection David Koepp may be best known as a successful screenwriter, the guy behind numerous _Jurassic Park_ and _Indiana Jones_ movies, as well as random works of genius like the 1996 _Mission: Impossible_. But he’s also directed a handful of modest yet terrific movies that have tended to fly under the radar. His 2008 _Ghost Town_ is one of those. Ricky Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic New York dentist who, after being clinically dead for seven minutes while undergoing a colonoscopy, awakens to find he can see dead people: they roam the city in droves, often dressed in anachronistic outfits, looking for ways to resolve their unfinished business. One of these ghosts is Greg Kinnear’s Frank Herlihy, a philandering husband who’s now doomed to wander until he makes amends to his widow, Téa Leoni’s smartypants Egyptologist Gwen. He enlists the living, breathing, perpetually kvetching Bertram to help, and almost against all odds, Bertram and Gwen start to fall in love. _Ghost Town_ is a romantic comedy with unlikely protagonists: will Gwen and Bertram be able to get it together and become a couple? And if they do, will it last? It’s also a comedy of transformation: sometimes people need to learn to live with themselves before they can live with anybody else. _Ghost Town_, a movie of delightfully wig-waggy rhythms, featuring a trio of comic actors who know how to make the whole enterprise sing, never found its audience in 2008\. But its pleasures spring eternal. 'Ghost Town': 50 Most Underappreciated Movies ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353506/ghost-town/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353506/ghost-town/"},"headline":"Ghost Town","datePublished":"2026-02-04T12:52:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:04:38.738Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353506/ghost-town/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a1046441faa0745/6998cbd666d4e308d8cbd0e0/Underappreciated-Movies-Ghost-Town.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"creator":"Stephanie Zacharek","articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a1046441faa0745/6998cbd666d4e308d8cbd0e0/Underappreciated-Movies-Ghost-Town.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353506/ghost-town/","name":"Ghost Town"}}]}] ```