Edgar Allan Poe said that the death of a beautiful woman is the “most poetical topic in the world”. Here, Beth (wide-eyed Emilia Jones) a young horror writer and disciple of H.P Lovecraft, will learn that, as she becomes trapped in her own horror story – not of her own making, but a home invasion torture-porn that reinvigorates typical horror tropes with a punch to the gut.
Martyrs director Pascal Laugier’s take on the home invasion genre tells the story of Beth, and of her move to her Aunt Clarissa’s eccentric and dilapidated house in the country along with her older sister, Vera, (Taylor Hickson) and her French mother, Pauline (Mylène Farmer). Their real-life horror story is signalled by a candy truck, glaring its lights at them. At a rest stop, Beth sees a newspaper headline about families being murdered nearby, an ominous foreshadowing of what is to come – the domestic becoming the horrific, Texas Chainsaw Massacre in doll land.
The house is a genre trope all in itself, filled to the gills with thousands of dolls and trick mirrors. The horror happens almost immediately, and with no mercy – the “villains” (played by Kevin Power and Rob Archer) are uncomfortable representations of the “Other”, both sadistic monsters, both mute. As the action amps up, the camera is wielded haphazardly, screams left lingering in your ears long after they have ceased.
A cut to the present day shows adult Beth (Crystal Reed) as a successful horror fiction writer, able to convert her teenage trauma into something sellable. Beth’s interest in horror fiction isn’t accidental. It allows the film to project back onto its audience and examine our own psyche in our love of being afraid – as catharsis, as an outlet, and as a way to examine our most morbid fascinations without consequence.
Beth is drawn back to the house where it all happened, and to the sister that she had left behind, now physically older (Anastasia Phillips) but still mentally unable to move on. Both sisters appear to be trapped in a cycle of constantly indulging in the pain of that one night, except one in a seemingly “healthier” way, through writing, and one via self harm. However, the real horror of their situation lands with a thud, reminding us that the horror genre is not just concerned with the physical, but what the mind will do to survive.
Reminiscent of another film from the New French Extremism Canon, Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension, both featuring ramshackle countryside houses, isolated roads, and the ability to make the sight of a truck make your blood run cold, Ghostland manages to render conventional jump scares and plot twists original and fresh, instead of worn out.
Todd Bryanton’s sound design is a mastery of tension all in itself. Every slap, punch, kick, reverberation felt, amped up to 11, a pure bludgeon of the senses, making Ghostland a heart thumping, haunted house ghost ride that is more viscerally frightening than any imagined horror story Beth could conjure up.
INCIDENT IN A GHOSTLAND / DIRECTOR: PASCAL LAUGIER / SCREENPLAY: PASCAL LAUGIER / STARRING: CRYSTAL REED, ANASTASIA PHILLIPS, EMILIA JONES, MYLENE FARMER / CERT: TBC / RELEASE DATE: TBC
