Horror fans may indulge this movie; I found it derivative and forced. It ups its game in its final half-hour – really too late for me – though it is interesting to see a film deliver something at the end, when the problem is the other way round for so many films: they run out of ideas after the opening act. A reunion of a wealthy family takes place in a handsome house in remote woodland; but we know from the grisly events that open the film that this same forest appears to be the happy hunting ground for a psychotic killer. I would have preferred the film to be structured differently, emphasising at the beginning the banal and non-horror tensions between family members that are in fact dramatised rather interestingly. Director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett think it is important to let the audience get some splatter early on, a form of narrative manipulation that makes the film's midsection anti-climactic and dull.
violence is incessant but not one-sided. A British (or maybe Australian?) student (Sharni Vinson), arriving at this American gathering with her college teacher, reveals she's a trained survivalist.Why is all this carnage taking place? Ask a silly question and the film provides a silly answer, but it has some truly creepy moments early on, as well as an authentic ruthlessness and some black humour. Very much école de Wes Craven.