Read More @HJ Previews: Trailer, Photos, Overview David Bruce, Webmaster

When it comes to love and relationships, every person has their baggage—past relationships, personal struggles, family dynamics, you name it. But this winter, baggage has arrived in entirely new package. She’s 5’2”. She’s dressed in white. And just because she’s dead does not mean she’s about to let her fiancé move on.

In Over Dead Her Dead Body, the facts of the story go something like this: Kate (Eva Longoria Parker) and Henry (Paul Rudd) are engaged to be married. On their wedding day, Kate gets crushed by a life-size ice angel and dies. A year later, Henry goes to a psychic named Ashley (Lake Bell) to try to get over Kate’s death. And let’s just say that even though Ashley fails to contact Kate on her first try, when Ashley tells a few lies to try to help Henry move on and then becomes the very person he decides to move on with, Kate quickly becomes more than eager to communicate with Ashley.

Cue an hour and a half of trying to make a relationship work while being by stalked by the ghost of your significant other’s ex. Throw in a bit of meditation on the struggle of having to let go. Contemplate what actually makes something worth fighting for. Mix in some third rate humor and some questionable chemistry. And you’ll pretty much have Over Her Dead Body.

In the end, Over Her Dead Body is far from amazing. But as I watched its characters navigate the bizarre situation they find themselves in, an interesting thought struck me—when it comes to love or anything else in life that actually matters, the nature of the very struggles we go through in their pursuit really is a spiritual one. As we seek the very things that will make our life complete and move us forward, there will be powers that will try to keep us from doing just that. If you believe in good and evil and heaven and hell, it makes sense that their opposing forces will try to exert their influence on our lives. And even though those forces may not appear in the form of our ghostly ex-whatevers, I can’t help but believe they are still there, battling around us in spirit form as well as battling within each of our own spirits.

When it comes to spiritual forces that hold us back, Kate is not exactly the devil incarnate. She is cute and her intentions really are sincere. But as I watched her work her magic to keep Ashley away from Henry, I have to say she made me realize just how much the devil has to work with whenever he wants to keep us from anything. First, there’s fear, plain and simple. You do this. Evil will get you. Then there’s the threat of what we will have to endure. You see how hard things are right now? They will just get harder. If that doesn’t do it, there’s always a million ways to make us think we’re not good enough. Our hips are too big, our brains are too small, our emotions are too unstable. Throw in a few more lies to top things off and pretty soon we’ll find ourselves not only doubting who we are and what we deserve, but also questioning the value of whatever we were pursuing.

Watching Kate’s own journey, we also see several other very powerful influences that can make sure we never get where we’re supposed to be going. Unlike most of the other characters, Kate’s mission to keep Henry and Ashley apart is fairly successful. But the problem becomes, even when she accomplishes that task, that her spirit isn’t set free. It may have been all she could see. It may have been all she wanted. But in the end, it isn’t what she needs. Score one for selfishness. Score two for keeping us stuck on the wrong thing and completely distracted from the right.

And if we still doubt how off course lies and misdirections can lead us, there’s Ashley’s assistant Dan (Jason Biggs). He’s been stuck on the same mission for five years. He is so deluded by who he thinks he needs to be to reach his goal, he has pretended to be someone he’s not for all five years. And he’s so afraid of losing what he doesn’t even have, he hasn’t made a real move to get what he desires the entire time.

Dead fiancé stalker or not, Over Her Dead Body shows us that it’s pretty much an uphill battle for any of us to reach the things we are meant to. You can call it human stupidity. You can look it as the universe’s sense of humor. But if you believe that there is more to this world than our own stupidity and an empty universe, the pattern of traps that hold us back and set us off course time and time again have to speak to a more intentional hand at work.

As Paul says in Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

But thankfully for us, that battle is not one sided. And if we ask him to join us, God promises that no matter what forces of fear, misdirection, and untruth may assault us, they will never win.