Marcus Dunstan directs Josh Stewart, Juan de Jesús Fernández de Alarcón and Karley Scott Collins in this cat and mouse game between a burgular and booby trap loving slasher.

Intended as a Saw prequel in its conception, this is for my money a better than the blockbuster series it outgrew. If torture porn is not your thing this is still quite a hard movie to stomach; the traps are not that inventive in their execution merely gory, the creepy slasher could be iconic in look and movement yet stays frustratingly one note here. But the potential is clearly there. The thief protagonist is a nice twist – will he save the family, himself or the loot? Can he achieve any of these goals? It is a new dilemma that ratchets up the tension more than any piano wire, acid glue or bear trap sprung can manage. So a nasty edged slasher movie which avoids the rote machinations of its genre but cannot quite elevate itself to the level of a Carpenter, Craven or The Purge films. Points for effort.

6