What started as a movie with similarities to The Strangers turned into this balls-to-the-wall survival of the fittest. You don’t quite know what you are getting into with this one and that makes it one hell of a ride.

A wealthy family gathers at their remote vacation home in Missouri (?). The parental units arrive first and find the home unlocked. Probably just some caretakers left it open. After the adult children arrive with their significant others, they all settle down to have a nice dinner. The shit meets fan when they are attacked during the dinner and must go from sipping wine to dodging crossbow bolts.

The family realizes they are being hunted by masked assailants, but all attempts to thwart the advancements prove futile. Except that the family doesn’t realize they have an ace card in the form of Erin (Sharni Vinson), who is in a relationship with one of the family members. She has had survival training when she was younger. While the derpy family is in shock, Erin starts doing smart things with a sense of urgency. She checks that the upstairs windows and doors are locked. She proceeds to start building traps to slow down the masked killers. Erin is like a methodical Kevin McCallister, but this ain’t Christmas time.

There are some interesting twists that give more depth to the story. The kills by both the masked murderers and the heroic protagonists are as brutal as they come. There were also more than a few abrupt jump scares that were incredibly effective, because they had almost no setup. It was just blam, AH! It’s refreshing when you don’t see it coming from a mile away.

Rating: