Extra Ordinary (dir. Mike Ahern & Edna Loughman. 93 minutes. R)

If, as a general rule, horror movies lose their appeal as you grow up, horror comedies tend to get better for the same reason that so many horror movies become horror comedies as you grow up. Horror makes you say, This cant be happening. Adulthood makes you say, Yeah, but it is, and find a way to laugh in the face of doom and soldier on. Extra Ordinary, written and directed by Irish duo Mike Ahern and Edna Loughman, captures this paradigm and bleeds it dry for laughs.

The archetypal horror-comedy hero Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, Ash Williams in Army of Darkness is too exhausted to be terrified, too disenchanted to be, well, enchanted. He meets unspeakable evil with a one-liner and a shrug (and it's always a he). Extra Ordinary takes this formula and gives it a feminine (feminist?) twist: Our protagonist is Rose Dooley (Maeve Higgins), a middle-aged, small-town drivers ed instructor who lives alone and subsists on takeout. Who could be world-wearier than that?

To look at, Rose is very ordinary indeed, but she possesses paranormal abilities known as talents, the banality of the term spoofing both The Shining and the bogus terms of art encountered in ghost-hunting TV shows. (Later in the film, a gloating will turn out to be precisely the supernatural phenomenon it sounds like: a goat, floating.) Rose can, like her deceased father, see, interact with, and yes, bust ghosts, but she has sworn never to do so again.

To the limited extent that Extra Ordinary is about anything other than ghoulish fantasy, emetic sight gags, and deadpan dialogue, it is about midlife disappointment, regret, and squandered talent. For Rose, all of the above hinge on her father, the paranormal expert Vincent Dooley (Risteard Cooper), whom we see in VHS clips of his hilariously low-budget TV show, Investigating the Extraordinary. Rose was responsible for his death, guilty of dadslaughter, as she calls it.

Rose is also lonely, as befits someone who mainly communes with the dead, until a blandly attractive widower named Martin Martin (Barry Ward) comes to her for driving instruction. He knows full well how to drive. Hes just heard it whispered that Rose could help someone with his problem: a wife who routinely commits domestic violence from beyond the grave. He needs an exorcist.

Roses desire to refuse the job is complicated by the sinister machinations of Christian Winter (Will Forte), a has-been rock musician bent on sacrificing a virgin to enable a comeback, and his wife, Claudia (Loves Claudia ODoherty). These two give the best comic performances of Extra Ordinary. Forte veers wildly and without warning between campy irritability and delirious fits of shrieking and cackling. Christians 70s mustache, his vaguely Carnaby Street clothing, and his lone Top 40 hit, Cosmic Woman, are perfectly suited to his tacky diabolism he reminds one of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, who famously died in a house once owned by Aleister Crowley.

And because fans of Love are so used to seeing ODoherty play clueless and overeager, its delightfully jarring to see her play Claudia, an ersatz Lady Macbeth who connives at getting free Chinese delivery and who keeps asking of the sacrificial virgin, Cant we just kill the bitch? (Not yet: The virgin must die beneath a blood moon.)

When Christians intended victim is accidentally and prematurely blown up while levitating above a pentagram, a gory gag that clashes nicely with the films essential sweetness, he needs to locate a new virgin. He settles on Martins daughter Sarah (Emma Coleman). This leads Rose and Martin into the films madcap-race-against-time component, which involves a series of hasty exorcisms, the copious vomiting of ectoplasm, and some versatile performances by Ward, who is pressed into being temporarily possessed by a half-dozen or so ghosts.

How all this resolves itself might not be hard for a dyed-in-blood horror fan to guess. Suffice to say it relies on the horror clich of the difficulty of finding a genuine virgin, which has been used in films such as The Wicker Man, Andy Warhols Dracula, Once Bitten, What We Do in the Shadows, and Jennifers Body. In this case, the reveal is a final piece of character development that gives Extra Ordinary what passes, in the circumstances, for an emotional spine.

Its worth stressing what a nostalgia trip this film is. It has a meticulously 80s feel, with an understated but ominous synth-heavy soundtrack reminiscent of Goblin, the prog-rock band that scored many of horror maestro Dario Argentos films, and cheesy quick cuts, including an inspired montage of every character (including a sinister bird) screaming in succession. The appearance of the Evil One is an intentionally goofy special effect that recalls the original Ghostbusters, a movie Rose hasnt seen or heard of this films sly way of denying its biggest influence. Extra Ordinary is most creative in the recurring clips of Vincent Dooleys TV show, complete with the noise and garbled audio of a degraded VHS tape. Children of the '80s will understand.

Adulthood is hard, even if you arent gifted with the talents, and the hardest thing about it is becoming the person youre supposed to be. Its a banal message, sure, but its enough of a message to keep audiences invested in Roses preposterous plight. Extra Ordinary is also a pleasure in its burlesque of satanism and the unhinged power hunger behind so much modern ambition. Christian and Claudia Winter may be willing to sell their souls for a cheap kind of fame and fortune. Rose, who stands in for the best of us, is satisfied with friends, family, cultivating her excellences, and (this being a horror movie, after all) getting laid.

Stefan Beck is a writer living in Hudson, New York.

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