Incident in a Ghostland

Directed by Pascal Laugier, Incident in a Ghostland follows a single mother (Mylène Farmer’s Pauline) as she and her two daughters (Emilia Jones’ Beth and Taylor Hickson’s Vera) move into a creepy old house – with bloody chaos ensuing almost immediately as the family is attacked by a pair of deranged killers. Filmmaker Laugier, working from his own screenplay, admittedly does an effective job of kicking Incident in a Ghostland off with a bang, as the movie boasts a compelling opening stretch that’s heightened by an exciting, visceral home-invasion sequence – with the picture, beyond that point (and unfortunately), beginning its slow-but-steady descent into total and complete irrelevance. The film, which transpires mostly within the aforementioned house, suffers from an often astonishingly tedious midsection that’s been suffused with eye-rolling jump scares and an emphasis on the protagonists’ ongoing efforts at hiding and fighting back. (There’s just so much screaming in this interminable trainwreck.) And although Laugier offers up a fairly intriguing mid-narrative plot twist, Incident in a Ghostland crawls towards a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired third act that couldn’t possibly be less interesting or more obnoxious – which certainly does confirm the film’s place as a shockingly incompetent effort from a once-promising director.

1/2* out of ****