This movie is a pretty straightforward horror flick. It has nothing special about it in the first half of the movie that really makes it stand out in the horror department, but I don't believe that it relies on that. The movie very strongly relies on the plot twist to carry the message and basically the whole movie. The following summary includes massive spoilers for the movie and it's main twist.
Simply explained, Pauline,(Mom) Beth and Vera(Kids) move into new weird house while serial killers are out and about, killing parents and abusing their daughters. On the road they encounter a weird ice cream truck with weird people inside that the teens are promptly rude to. Family arrives at the house and everything seems fine until the same ice cream truck pulls up and parks in front of the property. The aforementioned serial killers burst into the house (one of them being a big fat man and the other being a transgender woman) and try to kill the mom and abuse the teens. The mom gets the upper hand on both killers and murders both of them, which promptly sends us about 16 years into the future.
The attack seems to have been relived through a dream of one of the teens involved in the attack, Beth. She has now, 16 years after the incident, grown up to be a famous, successful and renowned writer with her book "Incident in a Ghostland" based on her horrific experiences. We see her with her husband, who is at the same time her manager. They seem to be a happy couple, watching back one of Beth's talkshow appearances when the phone rings. As Beth picks up, she hears her sister Vera cry and scream out for help over the phone and saying that their mom isn't picking up before hanging up herself. Beth tells her husband that she is worried for her sister but believes it to be another one of her "psychic episodes". She tells her husband that she will be going back to the old spooky house to make sure everything is okay. It seems like Vera hasn't been able to let go of the attack for years, even being confined to a cell in the basement of their old home. Beth greets her Mom which hasn't changed one bit since the last shot of the incident that we saw her in. They spend some time together but as Beth spends more time in the house, weird things begin to happen. Mirrors with the message "Help Me!" written on it in lipstick, Vera being attacked by an invisible entity and showing up in the middle of the night, chained to a table dressed entirely in doll makeup and clothing. Something was definitely not right but Beth can't put her finger on what it is. One night, Vera was being attacked again by an invisible assailant. Their mother apparently calls 911 and storms out of the house to "make sure they don't miss the entrance". Beth eventually falls asleep on a table, getting up to her face being grabbed by the transgender attacker in a dream. She promptly wakes up in her bed, walking to the mirror and seeing that her face is completely bruised, battered and badly swolen. In her mind, there is only one person that could have done this to her and it is obviously Vera. She walks downstairs and confronts her sister, yelling at her, asking her why she did this to her. Vera just responds that "they are playing with you now". Beth begins to break down as Vera's words that seemed like absolute insanity suddenly begin to make more sense. She tells her sister that she needs to wake up and to accept that indeed, her mother is dead.
This is the big twist of the movie. Beth's face changes in one cut, revealing her younger form with the battered and bruised face and then a montage of the attack that was shown at the beginning of the movie with one major difference. Pauline, their mom, never overpowered the assailants. She never struck down the fat man and his accomplice. She never killed both. She was stabbed multiple times and had her throat slit by the transgender woman all those years ago. Beth never grew up to be a famous writer or have a husband and a kid. Those were all delusions, simply coming from pictures they had in the basement. Beth simply retreated into a fantasy world where her mother saved both of her daughters lives and lived on instead of facing the truth. The truth of her mother being violently murdered, and her and her sister being held captive by the same killers all this time. Vera had to somehow get her sister back so she tried every possible thing to make Beth snap out of her reality and come back to the actual reality of the situation. The mirror, the attacks, the phone call. All of those were signs by Vera to Beth in an attempt to wake her up. The two girls now had to face the reality.
The reason I believe this is a good movie is because of three major things. The actors, the characters and the twist.
The actors do a great job of showing emotion and pain through all of the events that transpire in this horrific movie. Especially the adult version of Beth had me grasping my seat in anticipation every time she was on screen.
The characters at the same time feel alive and also dead, let me explain. For some reason, characters like Vera and Beth had me feeling very real emotions. They feel like multidimensional personalities in a sea of one-sided sort of throwaways. These throwaways that I mean, are basically all people in Beth's self-made reality. From her husband to the very odd talkshow host to her mother to even HP Lovecraft felt very off and there was a tinge of weirdness and an uncanny vibe every time they spoke or interacted with Beth. This made sense as soon as the twist hit me. All of those people, were in Beth's mind. This means she gave them their personalities, emotions, voices; everything. Of course she wouldn't know how to act out her non-existent husband in her head to a perfect degree. It all felt very fan-fiction(y) to me and I suppose that's a good thing.
Now, the twist is really the backbone of this movie. I would dare to say, that if you already knew the twist of this movie, I wouldn't recommend you to watch it. This is one big problem I have as I love to watch movies over and over to keep finding new things and enjoyment, but this seems to be one of those movies that sadly just don't allow for that. You see, as soon as you know that all that Beth is doing in her grown up life is all fiction, the movie suddenly just becomes a little less exciting and fun because you already saw everything it has to offer. But to give credit where it is due; the first time I saw this movie, the twist absolutely blew me away. I was so locked on what would happen to Vera and what was happening around them that I never expected it to go the other way around, making Beth the crazy one. I would definitely recommend it if you are completely blind going in. And I mean completely blind.
Honestly, this movie is good. Sure it has it's fair share of controversies with apparent transphobia, misogyny and all that mish mash but if you objectively look at it, it's a pretty good one time watch. I would say that the whole team did a great job on the movie but considering one of the lead actresses suffered major facial injury due to a lack of care by staff on set, I will not go as far. Instead, good job to the actors for making the movie feel alive.
