INCIDENT IN A GHOSTLAND Review – Cruel, Mean, and Ugly With Little to Offer
Starring Emilia Jones, Taylor Hickson, Mylène Farmer, Rob Archer, Kevin Power
Written by Pascal Laugier
Directed by Pascal Laugier
The works of H.P. Lovecraft have influenced and guided horror creators for the better part of a century. His ability to create an atmosphere of cosmic dread and terror was, and still is, renowned and, putting his raging racism to the side, he shaped the genre in ways that few others can claim to have done. Martyrs director Pascal Laugier’s latest foray into horror, Incident in a Ghostland, carries a strong appreciation and love for Lovecraft within its story and yet it fails to capture what makes horror so effective.
The film follows sisters Beth and Vera along with their mother Pauline as they move into her recently deceased aunt’s home. Their first night there, they are attacked by a pair of deranged murderers. Years later, Beth returns home after a desperate call from Vera, whereupon the story takes a more sadistic twist.
Highlighting the positive first, the film maintains an unending sense of evil and dread. Nearly every frame feels oppressive and claustrophobic, the walls of the house breathing down the necks of our protagonists, the miasma cloying and thick. Laugier lingers on spooky dolls and decaying infrastructure while never hesitating – to the point of over-relying – to eke every creepy sound out of the house imaginable. Staircases creak with age while pipes rattle, desperate to burst at the slightest provocation.
Unfortunately, the oppressiveness of this film feels ugly, forced, and “in-your-face”. There is no subtlety to Incidents in a Ghostland, not in any of its facets. The jump scares have cliché string stabs, unrealistically creepy dolls litter the screen, and what lights are present all seem to rely on 30w bulbs. The violence is almost solely that of a brick shithouse of a man slapping these two young women around being a creep who lifts up the skirts of dolls to sniff their crotches because…gross.
Even the villains are caricaturesque, with one presented as either a trans woman or a cross dresser – it’s unexplained, is entirely unnecessary and almost offensively included – while the other, who is credited as “Fat Man”, could be the twin of See No Evil‘s Jacob Goodknight, separated only by his cleft lip and intellectually disabled behavior. The former’s role is never really explained, even to a rudimentary degree. Is he/she (this is not meant to be a transphobic comment but rather a commentary on the confusing and misleading nature of the character) supposed to represent a parent, a mother/father hybrid, to this childish monstrosity? Is the physical presentation done simply to try and make audiences feel uncomfortable? While killers who come with no explanation can be done well – see The Strangers and “Because you were home.” – these two demand more of a story and the lack of even an inkling into their wicked ways detracts from the terror they have to offer.
Both Jones and Hickson play their roles with gusto and determination, committing themselves entirely to produce killer (no pun intended) performances. However, the script, which feels quite flat in more than a few places, doesn’t offer them much of a spectrum upon which to pull from. For Hickson, it’s either teenage angst or pure terror while for Jones the role adds in dashes of catatonia, so hurray for blank, stare-off-into-the-distances faces?
While Laugier’s Martyrs was certainly more cruel, it had least had an ending that spurred discussion and challenged viewers and their beliefs. Incident in a Ghostland offers no such experience. It’s mean-spirited presentation left little more than a bad taste in my mouth. For a film that quite literally scarred one of its own, this film will leave most horror fans unscathed.
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Incident in a Ghostland
Summary
Unpleasant, vicious, and mean-spirited, Incident in a Ghostland is the kind of film that sets horror back and gives credence to those who decry the genre as misogynistic and regressive.
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