First time writer/director Bryan Bertino goes for nerve sawing tension rather than gore, and thoroughly achieves it through inventive camera angles and an unsettling score and sound effects. Unfortunately logic, natural behaviour and consistency are all sacrificed on the altar to achieve such a living, breathing sense of dread, and cliché often curbs an otherwise realistic depiction of events.

But here’s the most interesting thing about the movie; there’s hardly a word of swearing (in fact, Bettie scolds a colleague for the language in a bawdy song), no blood, no violence, hardly even a raised voice, yet the film’s rated MA. Have we really come so far in 50 years?

What else but the movies could make the bad guys the heroes? They’re mostly at home in comedies or films with comic elements, because while we know there are guys out there who can crack safes, launch computer viruses or deal drugs, they’d never act against the innocent …would they?