Released in theaters on March 14, Ghostland is the fourth feature film by director Pascal Laugier and lives up to the rest of his work. After the death of an aunt, Pauline and her two daughters Beth and Vera move into her home. At night, they are savagely attacked by strangers. Each tries to survive this night of horror in her own way. Years later, Beth has become a bestselling author, while her sister is still mad at the aunt's house. In order to help Vera, Beth returns to the scene of the tragedy.
Ghosland, a must-see horror film
It is a real horror film like few of them, especially in French cinema, that Pascal Laugier presents to us. With his film Martyrs in 2008, the director had already positioned himself among the big names in horror cinema, not afraid of censorship or criticism. With Ghostland, he confirms his talent and establishes himself as a key figure in the genre. In his films Saint-Ange in 2003 and The Secret in 2012, Pascal Laugier had already shown his ability to quickly establish very particular and easily recognizable atmospheres. In a few minutes, the atmosphere of Ghostland is set: a small town where everyone knows each other, a family exposed, an old dark building full of old dolls, a teenager obsessed with the work of Lovecraft. The perfect setting for a pure horror movie. The film takes up the codes of the genre and begins in a very classic way before revealing its true nature in a reversal of situation worthy of those to which Pascal Laugier has accustomed us. The violence of the aggression justifies banning the film at least 16 years old, but the horror on screen is more psychological. It is the feelings of the characters that are put forward beyond the physical violence that the spectator witnesses. Far from being drowned in unnecessary jumpscares, the film takes its time and uses them sparingly, only in support of its atmosphere. Ghostland does not need to surprise the viewer to frighten him, its atmosphere and scenario are more than enough.
A cast of choice for Ghostland
The atmosphere in a film is something extremely fragile that nothing can waver, especially an acting that would not be credible and that would ring false. In Ghostland, not a single misstep is to be deplored among the members of the film crew. The actors are simply bluffing. Even the two actresses playing the teenage girls have a perfectly fair acting, knowing the difficulty of the scenes they had to shoot and the fact that Emilia Jones, who plays Beth as a child, is barely sixteen years old. Emilia Jones and Taylor Hickson are entirely believable and touching in the role of Pauline's two daughters, allowing the viewer to attach to the characters. Actresses Crystal Reed and Anastasia Phillips, who play adult Beth and Vera, echo their child character perfectly and reinforce the film's credibility. As for Mylène Farmer, who plays the role of their mother, she is simply perfect in the role of the loving mother, full of sweetness and ready to do anything to defend her daughters at all costs and watch over them. The choice to attribute a few sentences in French in the original version makes him a character all the more endearing for his spontaneity and tenderness. Rob Archer and Kevin Power, as the villains, are absolutely terrifying and although their appearance may trigger a few laughs in the room, they sound particularly nervous. The acting without false note is positioned as a fierce ally of the atmosphere established both by the sets and the play of light. The choice of plans makes it possible to bring a final touch to this work of goldsmith, giving a final result of great aesthetic beauty.
Ghostland, the worthy newborn of Pascal Laugier's work
With his previous films, Pascal Laugier was not known for sparing his audience. He is one of those rare directors who deal with serious subjects and do not hesitate to spare the viewer nothing. Particularly attached to childhood, as we have seen in Sant'Angelo with abused children and the theme of childbirth, in Martyrs with the kidnapping of children and its consequences in adulthood and in The Secret, with the mass abduction of children, Ghostland is no exception to the rule. Childhood literally permeates the entire film, from the second to the last, from the setting to the very characters of the aggressors. The dolls in this film are not haunted or cursed objects, but symbols. They are this protective object of children, which at the same time teaches them to grow up by becoming aware of responsibilities. The theme of the tales, with all that they contain of initiation, is significant throughout the film, until the very representation that Beth will make of the aggression. Pascal Laugier is interested in childhood, yes, but especially in bruised childhood. All his characters live extremely traumatic experiences and, far from representing these events as trivial, the director strives to highlight their traumatic impact and the psychological mechanisms of survival that are triggered at this moment. In this, the choice of Lovecraft as the subject of Beth's obsession is particularly commendable. Of all the horror writers, he is certainly the one who has written the most about the human inability to imagine horror in its pure state without descending into madness.
There is a quote from Howard Phillips Lovacraft, taken from his collection The Other Gods and Other Short Stories , which perfectly summarizes the work of Pascal Laugier, of which Ghostland is currently the greatest success:
Intellectually gifted men know that there is no clear difference between the real and the unreal, that things appear to us only through the delicate physical and mental synthesis that takes place subjectively in each of us.
