Joseph Ruben directs Elijah Wood, Macaulay Culkin and Wendy Crewson in this thriller where a grieving nephew stays with his extended family only to discover his cousin is a budding psycho.

Dull and ridiculous, a very difficult combination to pull off. Culkin is trying to play against brand and it just doesn’t work. The genesis of the project is far more fascinating than the end product. The first draft of the screenplay was written by great novelist Ian McEwan. Heathers’ Michael Lehmann was fired from the director’s chair very late into pre-production. There are a couple of shots and moments that do suggest a visual and psychological sophistication but they stand out like sore thumbs within the rest of the thin gruel result. Special mention must go to the late great Elmer Bernstein’s atrociously incongruous score. If you ever need proof that nobody had a handle on what they were making here then the jarringly upbeat and old fashioned soundtrack is the smoking gun.

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We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/