Whilst it wasn't the gold plated clusterfuck I was afraid it would be, it was still nowhere near the grue-soaked good time it so easily should have been. And it was all down to its tone.

The premise is a good one, if a little bit high concept, but you can kinda see where it could go. Samara Weaving is the spunky but not indestructible heroine who when the arrows and knives start flying balances out smarts and skills with just the right dash of "what the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!" required to ground her. The rest of the cast are good value, especially the under-seen Henry Czerny and Andie MacDowell as the heads of the family hunting her through their nicely gothic and secret-passage laden mansion.

But after the dust settles once the plot gets going, and an initial period of being impressed that they are playing this absolutely straight as a die passes, you're left somewhat...……...dumbfounded that they are actually going to play the entire film completely straight. Well, I say completely straight - there are the odd moments of humour mixed in, notably the accidental deaths of all the maids of the family - but apart from that, its a very straightlaced, almost po-faced slasher/thriller. And its all the worse for it.

It simply wasn't any fucking fun. When the premise was rich for a huge amount of the stuff. It even gave us a sniff of what could have been with a claret explosion of an ending that suddenly went 'ha ha, fooled you......see? We WERE having fun all along' that now just felt so out of place, you kinda resented the film for actually giving it to you.

A good premise, a decent cast and a nice attitude to graphic bloodshed and uber violence all ended up being wasted in a film that simply wasn't much fun to watch.