Incident in a Ghostland (2018), directed by Pascal Laugier, is a psychological horror film that follows a mother, Pauline, and her two daughters, Beth and Vera, who are attacked in their new home by intruders on their first night.
We begin with Pauline, a single mother, driving her two daughters, Beth and Vera, to their recently inherited rural home. Right away, we’re introduced to the girls’ contrasting personalities:
Beth is quiet, imaginative, and obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and horror writing.
Vera is louder, more rebellious, and seemingly frustrated by Beth’s detachment.
The tension between the sisters is palpable, but that quickly becomes the least of their problems.
THE ATTACK
Their first night in the house, things take a horrifying turn. Two intruders break in while they’re unloading their boxes from the car:
A large, silent, mentally impaired man who treats women like dolls.
A woman dressed in old-timey clothes who caters to the man’s urges but also seems to get some pleasure out of torturing this family
The home invasion is brutal. Pauline fights like hell to protect her daughters, and after a savage struggle, she manages to kill both attackers. It’s horrifying, but the nightmare seems to be over.
YEARS LATER, OR SO IT SEEMS
Beth is now a successful horror novelist living in Chicago with a husband and son. She’s clearly made a life for herself, but she’s haunted by what happened. Then she gets a disturbing call from her sister Vera, who’s still living in the house with their mom. Vera is screaming — saying “they’re still here.”
Beth is worried and tries calling her mom but to no avail, so she rushes back to the house.
BACK AT THE HOUSE
When Beth returns, things feel… off.
Vera is completely unhinged, acting like she’s still being attacked, scratching at the walls, screaming.
Pauline seems tired and passive, trying to keep Vera calm.
Beth struggles to reconnect, unsure if Vera is delusional or if there’s something more sinister happening.
Vera keeps yelling that Beth is just hiding from reality. She insists none of this is real. Beth dismisses it, until she starts noticing strange inconsistencies.
BACK TO REALITY
Suddenly, everything shifts and we’re violently thrown back to that night in the house, but the attackers are still there. The entire adult life Beth had been living was a complete mental fabrication to escape the horror of reality. Pauline is dead, murder by the woman, and the girls are still stuck in the house, now being used to satiate the male intruder’s urges.
THE BASEMENT
We see the sisters living in horror:
- The “Candy Truck Woman” controls the space.
- The brute abuses the girls, dressing them up like dolls, forcing them into humiliating “playtime.”
- Beth dissociates completely, mentally checking out to escape the torture.
FIGHTING BACK
Vera advises Beth on how to act when the woman takes her upstairs, but nothing could have prepared her for the horrors she was about to face. It was interesting how Beth went to from completely disassociating, to getting creative to fight back against this horrible duo. Eventually she manages to injure the man and while he’s unconscious she gets the key to the basement from his pocket to go get Vera. The girls are able to make it out of the house and run through the woods all night. At day break, the come upon a road a see a police car drive by. Thinking they missed their chance, they start screaming, and the police car actually reverses and comes back. The girls are extremely shaken and in the light of day you can really see how badly they’ve been beaten. The male police officer, who the girls were terrified of, goes to call in the situation while the female office stays with them. Just as the girls begin to describe what has happened to them, the male officer who is walking back to the group gets shot, and we pan to see the woman captor has found them. Before the other officer can unholster her weapon, she is shot multiple times and dies right there in the field.
The girls are chained up in the candy woman’s truck, and we see that she has taken them back to their house. At this point, Beth is back in her dream land and completely disconnected from reality.
Once in the house again, Beth eventually snaps out of her delusion and with Vera’s help, they are able to injure the man. Luckily as the male officer who found them had already called the situation in, with the help of the woman we meet at the beginning of the movie from the convenience store, the police locate the girls and arrive just in time to save them from the woman.
As the girls are being wheeled out to the ambulance, Beth looks back at the house and sees her mom, who motions down at the type writer that is on the front lawn, telling her that this is going to be her breakthrough story.
It’s a chilling moment, reminding us that the line between fiction and reality, trauma and survival, is fragile.
TAKE AWAYS
This movie is a *visceral* experience. It plays with perception in a way that’s deeply disturbing, using horror not just for shock value, but to reflect how the mind might fracture under extreme trauma.
Some viewers have criticized the film for its intense violence and perceived exploitation, while others praise its unflinching portrayal of psychological dissociation.
Whether you love it or hate it, Incident in a Ghostland forces you to confront the question:
What would you do if reality was too painful to live in?
Strange Sisters Podcast 
Leave a comment