Director: Mark Tonderai
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue, Max Thieriot, Gil Bellows
**
Completed two years ago, this generic schlock-horror thriller has finally been granted a cinema release.
Lawrence plays Elissa, a Chicago teenager newly arrived in small-town Pennsylvania with her single mother Sarah (Shue). The house next door has a history of murder but Elissa is drawn to Ryan (Thieriot), the misfit son of the slaughtered family.
Behind its shock twists and stylistic flourishes, the film is mainly composed of grindingly familiar slasher-movie clichés with no redeeming wit or irony.
This is a shame, because the scenes between Lawrence and Shue work pretty effectively as straight mother-daughter drama. Alas, even fine performers cannot elevate second-hand characters stuck in a third-hand plot.