This elegant and surprisingly fast-paced blend of horror and suspense overcomes some of its more ridiculous ingredients thanks to endless invention.

A trapped-in-a-house thriller pitting thieves against an unexpectedly resourceful victim, the lean and mean pic offers scares aplenty and at least a couple of game-changing twists.

With his second film, Alvarez has mastered the tension of Hitchcock and the misdirection of a magician, proving himself to be a filmmaker of merit even when dealing with more realistic horrors.

An intense, streamlined exercise in gruesome thrills, with a tiny glimmer of social context (it’s all about the economy) which doesn’t take away from the exciting struggle to get out of this house of horrors.

I could have done without a talky, explain everybody’s motivations third act. But there’s no getting around the crowd-pleasing nature of the bloody, vengeful and self-righteous wrath that rains down upon one and all in the finale.