INCIDENT IN A GHOSTLAND (2018)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Pascal Laugier
Writer:       Pascal Laugier
Producer:  Jean-Charles Levy, Nicolas Manuel, Clement Miserez, Matthieu Warter, Ian Dimerman, Sami Tesfazghi, Scott Kennedy, Brendon Sawatzky
Stars:     Crystal Reed, Anastasia Phillips, Emilia Jones, Taylor Hickson, Kevin Power, Rob Archer, Mylene Farmer, Adam Hurtig

Review Score:

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Summary:

Intruders terrorize a mother and her two teenage daughters inside their secluded countryside home.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Pauline travels with her teenage daughter Elizabeth Keller, an aspiring horror author and H.P. Lovecraft enthusiast, and Beth’s irritated sister Vera as they move to their dead aunt Clarissa’s secluded old home. Stopped at a roadside gas station on the way, Beth reads a newspaper article about a string of home invasions where parents are murdered but daughters are spared.

A strange candy truck driven by a woman later revealed to be a transvestite ominously speeds past the family’s station wagon. The candy truck continues stalking the three women at the gas station and follows them into the driveway of their new home.

Shortly after the women settle into the house for the evening, a fat man breaks in and attacks Pauline. After incapacitating Pauline, the fat man drags the two teens into the basement by their hair. The woman from the candy truck enters the house to observe. The woman tells Beth, “we just wanna play with dolls.”

Pauline recovers and viciously fights the woman in the kitchen. Despite being repeatedly stabbed, Pauline seemingly knocks out the woman. Following Vera’s screams, Pauline finds the fat man and repeatedly stabs him. Having recovered, the woman charges at Pauline. Pauline turns to stab the woman in the throat.

Beth suddenly wakes from a flashback nightmare of this event. Now a successful horror author living in Chicago with a husband and son, Beth appears on a talk show to promote her new novel, “Incident in a Ghost Land,” based on her experience that night.

Beth receives a frantic phone call from Vera, who has suffered from delusions since the trauma, begging her to return to the house where she still lives with Pauline. When Beth arrives, Pauline explains that Vera remains unable to move on and continues reliving that night over and over. While staying in the house, Beth has strange experiences including hearing a truck, seeing “help me” written on a mirror, and having Vera claim that their tormenters are still trying to get to them.

Beth finds Vera chained to her bed and made up to look like a doll. Beth becomes locked out of the room. From the other side of the door, Beth hears what sounds like someone attacking Vera.

When Vera exits, she flails as though being attacked by a ghost. Pauline calls an ambulance. Pauline tells Beth to not listen to what Vera says before going outside to flag down the ambulance.

Vera vanishes. Beth hears the woman from the candy truck’s voice say, “we broke your sister and now it’s your turn.” Beth briefly sees the fat man. Beth falls asleep waiting for her mother and ends up captured by the candy truck woman.

When Beth recovers, she discovers bruises all over her beaten face. Beth finds Vera, also badly beaten, in the basement and angrily blames her for the wounds.

Vera implores her sister to accept what really happened and face the truth. At Vera’s insistence, Beth finally flashes back to a memory of the candy truck woman having actually killed their mother when they were younger.

Beth breaks from her imagined adulthood to realize that the fat man and candy truck woman are still holding her and Vera captive as teens in Aunt Clarissa’s home. Vera tells Beth that their tormenters are playing a game and if they take her upstairs, Beth shouldn’t move or cry no matter what the fat man does.

The candy truck woman dresses up Beth like a doll and leaves her in a room littered with toys. The fat man enters to begin molesting and torturing the inanimate dolls. When the fat man gets to Beth, she eventually fights back and flees. Beth manages to free Vera and the two sisters escape the house with the candy truck woman in pursuit.

Beth and Vera make it to a distant road. Two state troopers stop to help. One of the troopers reports the incident to dispatch. However, the woman arrives, guns down both troopers, and recaptures the girls in the candy truck.

Beth mentally retreats back to her adulthood fantasy. At a cocktail party, Beth meets H.P. Lovecraft, who tells Beth that her novel is a masterpiece. Following an encounter with Pauline, Beth sees her sister screaming for help on the other side of a door and decides to return to rescue Vera.

Back in reality, Beth escapes from the fat man after he tries strangling her. Beth initiates a violent fight with the candy truck woman after knocking her off Vera.

The fat man charges toward Beth, but another state trooper arrives in time to gun him down. The trooper then holds the woman at gunpoint. When the woman rushes him, the trooper guns her down too. Beth reunites with Vera.

Authorities arrive. Beth sees a vision of Pauline waving from inside the house as both girls are taken away in ambulances.

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Review:

“Incident in a Ghostland” immediately endears itself to horror fiction fans by opening on a photo of H.P. Lovecraft.  The grandmaster’s fingerprint of eldritch entities and sanity shattering sights won’t be found inside the film however.  “Incident in a Ghostland” is a more visceral breed of beast.

Take a look at the logline.  “Intruders terrorize a mother and her two teenage daughters inside their secluded countryside home.”  After picking up the eyes that just rolled out of their sockets, understand that although the unenticing summary’s surface sounds like old hat, the movie stocks several secrets up its sleeve to notch it above being another routine run through a harrowing home invasion.

Aspiring author and Lovecraft lover Beth, her harrumphing sister Vera, and their French expatriate mother Pauline are moving into dead aunt Clarissa’s remote countryside home.  Populated only by a collection of creepy old dolls, it’s a house so haunting that Vincent Price should offer $10,000 to spend the night.

Eeriness starts ahead of their arrival.  On the drive, a curious candy truck driven by a shadowy woman charges the trio’s vehicle as though it is dueling Dennis Weaver.  The weird wagon continues stalking the women when they stop at a gas station.  There, Beth also spots a newspaper headline about local parents being murdered in their homes while daughters are strangely spared.  What Beth does not yet realize of course is that they are about to become the killer’s next targets.

Saying anything more starts straying into spoiler territory.  If this is the extent of the information you have regarding the story, keep it that way.  “Incident in a Ghostland” is a leap best taken wearing a blindfold beforehand.  It’s not overly tricky, but the movie is better able to enrapt attention when the majority of its mystique is maintained.

If you’re still anxious to acquire a sense of the style in store, “Incident in a Ghostland” can be described in terms of the unease instilled via tried and true suspense setups.  “Ghostland” wears obvious influences on both sleeves.  Writer/director Pascal Laugier paints with stripes of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Strangers,” “The Shining,” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Most of these moments stitch in seamlessly.  Some seem included simply to have a “Children of the Corn” kid run across the road for no real reason.

From sketchy electricity to messages written on mirrors, all levels of “where have I seen that before?” tropes are mixed in.  But by not emulating any one movie too directly, “Incident in a Ghostland” largely feels like its own evil entity regardless of the echoes. Many sounds bounce back to strike the same fearful chords those films did, allowing “Ghostland” to aim straight for similar thrills without ripping off the originals outright.

To a lesser extent than he did with “Martyrs” (review here), Laugier structures “Ghostland” as an exercise intended to disturb viewers, and it does.  Boundaries are pushed, although Laugier doesn’t go as far as other shock-oriented filmmakers have, himself included.  Teen girls are physically abused and stabbing slaughter stays savage.  Yet Laugier reins in such action so that intensity facilitates dread. It would be a stretch to claim the violence here is sensationalized or unjustified.

“Incident in a Ghostland” may not go far with gore, though suggestive scenes still evoke arguably unnecessary discomfort.  Would the finale have any less bark in its bite if it didn’t feature flesh torn off with teeth?  Probably not.  And I personally don’t need to see a girl peeing on herself while held upside down to sell the awfulness of her ordeal.  That being said, Devil’s Advocate could attribute such inclusions to the sensibilities French horror films like those from Laugier and Maury/Bustillo often display.  Tastes tuned further west have been warned.

Meanwhile, I contend that this spin leans closer to cerebral in how it goes about being unsettling.  Unusual antagonists and atypical storytelling remain weird enough to take the edge off of how nihilistic the horror can be.  Although occasionally ugly, “Incident in a Ghostland’s” mysterious mannerisms are intriguingly terrifying.  Provided some simplicity and plentiful pugilism can be stomached, “Ghostland’s” gruesome grittiness can satisfy almost any appetite for nightmarishly frightful chills.

Review Score:  75

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