Incident In A Ghostland AKA Ghostland (2018)

Although it often feels like a step up from his previous feature film (The Tall Man), Incident In A Ghostland once again shows that writer-director Pascal Laugier is a man who knows how to take some great ideas and squander them for the sake of some misguided attempts to wrongfoot viewers.

It's not long into Incident In A Ghostland when things get uncomfortable and nasty. A woman (Mylene Farmer) and her two daughters (Emilia Jones and Taylor Hickson) find themselves terrorised by a pair of vicious home invaders. As things build up, temporary relief from the onslaught comes when an adult incarnation of one of the girls (Crystal Reed) wakes up from a nightmare. She has suffered ever since that fateful night but at least it is all now behind her . . . or is the past about to catch up with her?

Jones/Reed and Hickson/Anastasia Phillips are both very good as, respectively, the younger and older incarnations of Beth and Vera, with the younger actresses having to put themselves through the wringer as their characters suffer through more and more violence. Farmer is also very good as the loving mother who wants to protect her daughters from harm, and both Rob Archer and Kevin Power do as well as can be expected while pigeonholed as the one-note psychos.

It's interesting that this movie begins with a quote about H. P. Lovecraft, for two reasons. First of all, the quote is one of the few moments of humour in the film. It's attributed to the main character played by Jones/Reed, summing up her literary aspirations and her main obsession. Second, it is in his fine essay, "Supernatural Horror In Literature", that I learned of the term conte cruel, a style of storytelling "in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalisations, frustrations, and gruesome physical horrors." Sound familiar? It's certainly something that Laugier is known for, with others giving it the modern label of torture porn.

Sadly, despite the humour and self-awareness shown by that opening quote, this is a movie that shows Laugier to be uninterested in anything other than pain and suffering, which becomes tiresome rather quickly, especially after scenes that hint at a much better tale to be told. We could have had a very smart and resonant film here. Early scenes show Reed being helpless, and even disbelieving, as her sister continues to suffer and be abused by unseen assailants. There are two possibilities in those moments, considering what we know at the time. Either an abuse survivor is so damaged by her experience that she cannot return to any state of normality, or someone is still being abused while the loved ones around her are unable to see it. Both of those ideas are intriguing, and both are immediately dropped as soon as Laugier can get back to simplistic moments of abuse and torture.

The film manages to avoid being a complete waste of time thanks to the scream-filled performances of the main actresses, some great production design, and the first 15-20 minutes. But everything else ensures that it also manages to be a crushing disappointment, especially if you were hoping for something with a bit of depth to it. Which actually puts it right on par with his previous feature.

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

The Tall Man (2012)

The Tall Man is almost the very definition of a wasted opportunity, but it's also a selection of decent scenes wrapped up in some downright unpleasant ideas that frame everything. Infuriating as it is, I probably won't be able to go on about the worst aspects of The Tall Man because they're tied in with one or two twists that I won't spoil for anyone who has yet to see the film. You'll just have to trust me when I say that the film is fatally flawed by the ideas it uses to take it from being a drama to, apparently, being a twisty, thrilling drama.

Writer-director Pascal Laugier pleased a lot of horror fans when he gave them Martyrs. I thought it was quite good, let down by a third act that lost all momentum and put too much faith in some ideas it was bringing to the surface. Strangely enough, while The Tall Man is a very different film it suffers from the same problem, though this time it's even more damaging.

A word of warning needs to go here. Despite what SOME people may have told you, The Tall Man is NOT a horror movie. It has one or two horror elements in the first half but as everything unfolds you will start to realise just how removed from the genre it is. This is a standard thriller with surprisingly few thrills. In fact, it's maybe better described as a dark drama.

Jessica Biel plays Julia Denning, a woman who lives in a small town that seems to be held in the clutches of fear by the titular tall man. Who is this figure? Is he even real? Well, the reality is that a large number of local children have gone missing over the years and the residents at least need someone or something to put the blame on. That would be the tall man. Stephen McHattie plays a Lieutenant who is after the kidnapper, William B. Davis is a Sheriff who also wants to bring him to justice and young Jodelle Ferland wants to meet him, but for her own reasons that are more to do with getting away from her home.

I can't knock the acting here. Stephen McHattie and William B. Davis may be underused, but they're both great when on the screen. Jodelle Ferland is proving to be a consistently good young actress and does very well while Jessica Biel makes the most of a rare role that she actually gets to dig her teeth into. Actors such as Samantha Ferris and Colleen Wheeler also do a great job.

No, the acting is all fine. The major flaw that the movie can't cover up is, I guess, Laugier. Well, as he wrote the horrible script full of such a troubling and blinkered attitude to the issues of poverty and parenting he's the first person to get the blame. The fact that he didn't even dress it up well enough to make it mildly diverting and entertaining, to put his strange message across without it being so jarring and front and centre, means that he gets doubly blamed. As it should be.

The Tall Man could have been an interesting film. It becomes an interesting film about a third of the way in and then maintains that potential for about twenty to thirty minutes. Sadly, it then goes from good to bad to worse so quickly and sharply that by the time the end credits roll you will be struggling to remember anything that you liked about it.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Tall-Blu-ray-Jessica-Biel/dp/B009YTGLD8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1358826500&sr=8-3