Few acts in modern rock and metal do spectacle quite like Ghost. Tobias Forge’s snappily dressed band of (mostly nameless) ghouls have spent almost 15 years subverting expectations, building a legacy as one of the most unique and riotously entertaining forces in rock’n’roll – their merging of extreme metal aesthetics and camp, classic rock-indebted bangers unlike anything else out there.
Over the course of five studio albums and increasingly ambitious live shows, the Swedes have undergone the unlikeliest of evolutions, from underground metal curios to arena-filling party-rock staples. Their most recent album, 2022’s Impera, crystallised their journey so far: a grandiose rock’n’roll opera; Jim Steinman by way of Def Leppard, like ABBA writing songs for Iron Maiden. It showed just how fun the ‘devil’s music’ can be, their cheekily subversive, pseudo-satanic tropes delivered with a nudge, a wink and a tap-dance.
Through it all, Forge has remained the driving force, always looking ahead to plan what shape the next piece of the ever-expanding Ghost puzzle will take. In 2024, that piece took the shape of Ghost’s first ever full-length movie, a full bells-and-whistles concert film called Rite Here Rite Now, released to the world in June. That it took the band this long to try their hand at spooking Hollywood is probably the biggest surprise, but Forge’s infamous perfectionism meant they weren’t going to rush anything out; in fact, the seeds for a Ghost movie were planted “over a decade ago”.
“The idea of making a film has been in my head for years,” Forge told Classic Rock’s sister magazine Metal Hammer earlier this year. “I’ve always been adamant about the web episodes not being too detailed, because you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner, so there’s been a lot of loose threads. But I figured that I could take these loose threads, tie them together in some sort of comprehensible form, and that could be the film.”
Ah yes, the web episodes. In 2018, ahead of their fourth studio album Prequelle, Ghost began sharing a series of tongue-in-cheek mini-movies on YouTube, fleshing out the narrative behind the band’s mysterious, cult-like gimmick. Starring the band’s fictional frontman Cardinal Copia (later to become Papa Emeritus IV, both played by Forge), it helped Ghost’s fanatical followers understand more about the band’s concept and its ongoing evolution. Those videos, titled Chapters, fed directly into the plot that runs in the background of Rite Here Rite Now. Did we mention the film has a plot? Look, there’s a lot going on…
“We wanted it to be that someone who doesn’t know shit about the story gets brought up to speed pretty quickly,” Forge acknowledged. Ghost needed to somehow craft a film that could both appeal to diehard fans already wrapped up in the band’s story and also stand on its own as a kickass concert film.
Teaming up with director and regular Ghost collaborator Alex Ross Perry (Queen Of Earth, Her Smell) and Jim Parsons (concert films and live DVDs for the likes of Metallica, Slash, Def Leppard and U2), Forge settled on a production that would mostly focus on elevating Ghost’s stunning live show, but still sprinkle enough of a narrative around it to move the band’s story forward.
The concert footage was shot at two blockbuster gigs at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California in September last year, both packing a 21-song set-list and some extra theatrical shenanigans that the rest of Ghost’s Impera world tour didn’t get (a piano ballad! Spooky skeleton dancers!). Around all this, extra backstage scenes would be shot that would not only establish the film’s plot, but also connect directly to the live performance.
“It was logistically very complex,” explained Perry, who had previously worked with Ghost on a number of projects. “It was challenging being at the Forum, shooting scenes that we were going to connect with scenes that we would be filming five months later.”
Those filming logistics were far from the only challenge the band and their team faced: while pitching the film to Hollywood backers, Forge had difficulty getting his ideas across. As a result, he and Ghost’s management had to finance the whole thing themselves.
“The film had to go through discussions with finance people,” he explained. “And let’s just say that I sometimes struggled to convey what we were just talking about, and not everyone understood it.”
Ultimately they got the job done. More than a decade after its first strands began to weave their way through Forge’s brain, Rite Here Rite Now landed in cinemas in the summer.
It was worth the wait: the film’s plot, pushing Papa Emeritus towards what threatens to be an untimely demise, is cobweb-thin and little more than bonus versions of the band’s ‘Chapter’ videos stitched together, but it’s still good fun and sneaks in just enough emotional heft to give the concert footage a touch more gravitas. And what footage it is. Jim Parsons has done a marvellous job of giving fans a true front-row (hell, at times front-of-stage) view of Ghost’s bombastic live show in all its sparkly, celebratory glory.
It also highlights the endearing passion that Ghost’s fan base has built over the years: fans decked out in nun habits, Nameless Ghoul costumes and homemade Papa Emeritus masks can be seen all over the venue, gleefully singing, crying and dancing as Ghost hammer through modern classics like Dance Macabre, Rats and Square Hammer. It all makes for one of the most joyously entertaining rock concert films in recent years.
You have to imagine that, as 2025 gets underway, Ghost surely start the year with an even bigger following than 12 months ago. And that’s saying something.
