Set in the early 1980s, this movie perfectly pastiches the TV movie terrors of an era of fluffy hairstyles and Satanic panics — albeit with a couple of bloody shocks to show filmmaker Ti West isn’t kidding.
Student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured to a remote mansion with the promise of a babysitting job, but the creepy householders (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) admit they actually want her to look after an aged relative who never leaves her room.
Alone in the house, Samantha is unnerved by an escalating series of ominous clues and wonders if she isn’t perhaps being stalked for some evil purpose.
West, who made the killer-bat picture The Roost, likes slow-building dread rather than all-out splat, and keeps you guessing which way the sneaky plot is going, all adding up to a satisfying shocker.
