Incident in a Ghostland

 Pascal Laugier does not make movies that are easy to recommend. His latest, Incident in a Ghostland, is no exception. It's... problematic, both for its subject matter and some ridiculous script decisions.

 The Keller family are moving to a house their aunt's left them on their will, somewhere in rural Manitoba. On the way, one of the daughters reads a news article about a series of killings where the adults are killed and the daughters are spared, to be tortured for weeks. Later, they're accosted by a weird-ass ice cream truck that follows them on the road for a while.
 Yeah, it's a little on the nose. It gets worse.

 Mom (Mylène Farmer) and daughters Beth (Emilia Jones - the nerdy one, wants to be a horror writer) and Vera (Taylor Hickson - the older one with the teen attitude) arrive at the house and find that their aunt had the type of taste in decoration only found in horror movies: all creepy tchotchkes and deformed dolls no right-thinking child would ever want to get close to.
 As they're unboxing stuff and setting up for the night, the ice cream truck arrives and in come the home invaders and... sigh. The villains are a seriously mentally handicapped mountain of a man, and an evil transvestite. I mean, come on.

 In any case, the invasion is brutal and easily the morbid highlight of the film. Tense, unsettling, shocking and everything this sort of thing should be in a movie in this genre. And yes, the threat of sexual violence is obvious, though it's implied rather than shown in any way. Still. It's pretty fucking intense and worth avoiding if this is not your sort of thing.
 Just as the dust settles mom, who had been left for dead, comes to the rescue and after a really nasty fight manages to somehow overpower the attackers.

 Cut to a decade and something later. Beth (now played by Crystal Reed) has become a famous horror writer, just like she always wanted. Her latest book, Incident in a Ghostland, is a best seller, she's got an adoring husband and a cute kid (who likes to dress up as young Mike Myers did for Halloween,) and is pretty much living in her best timeline.

 At least until her sister calls her in a state of panic. You see, her mom and sister stayed on the site of the home invasion (great call, mom), and poor Vera's been reliving that night over and over ever since. Worried, Beth tries to call mom, but can't get through. So she decides it's time for a family visit.

 When she gets there, everything turns out to be fine - or as fine as it could be, at least. Mom is fine. Vera is completely insane, hurting herself and causing a lot of emotional distress to her poor mom, but what can you do. The problem is, as the nights go on, weird things keep happening, and things don't add up.
 There's an obvious twist somewhere around here, one that's very easy to see coming. It almost ruined the movie for me because I did see it coming and thought that that was going to be what the movie was about... but no, the reveal comes fairly quickly (although not quickly enough.) The second half of the film is much more interesting.

 To go into more detail would be spoiling things. But it's pretty dark, and while it's not scary in the traditional sense it does offer tons of atmosphere, a lot of tension, and standard horror beats (expect a lot of jump scares). I'd rate it a lot higher if they didn't commit a critical fumble at the very end, leaving things a little more unsatisfying than they could have been.
 Also, maybe don't reference Lovecraft if the movie's not going to have any sort of cosmic horror.

 Technically it's superb, as you'd expect from Laugier - brilliantly shot and edited, with some outstanding (if eye-rolling-ly silly) sets. He also wrote the script, so some of the dialog is a little wooden. The music is fine, your standard horror tinkly piano, and the acting is great, with the actresses really selling their characters' distress.

 Incident in a Ghostland is a very thorny movie with some really daft choices, a couple really good ones, and a willingness to be deeply unpleasant and disreputable. It also has genuine warmth for its characters and as much as it wallows in misery, it has a positive message. It's just that you have to wallow through a lot of misery to get to it.