Ghost Town review – the phantoms and lost souls haunting a Japanese city after the 2011 earthquake

Katharine Round’s documentary puts cameras in taxis where drivers and fares reflect on the disaster’s impact and talk of crowds of spectres and disappearing passengers In a manner similar to Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, in which journeying lulls passengers into greater intimacy, this nocturnal taxi odyssey through the tsunami-hit city of Kamaishi on Japan’s east coast clears the road for the subconscious to manifest.

Conversations between the drivers and their customers drift back towards the cataclysm of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami with an undertow of grief, loss and absence. But at least this time there’s someone in the rear-view mirror to converse with; some drivers claim to have picked up phantom fares who later vanished from the back seat. The tsunami, it seems, breached the wall between the dead and living, dreams and reality. One taxi rank veteran says he saw spectres crowding into a phone booth one night after the disaster, as if trying to call for help to get home. Another recounts a dream of a drowning white horse.…