Holidayfromhell
BARBARIAN Cert 18 ★★★★
In cinemas now
Film-makers have long known that hotels are terrifying places. You’re sleeping among the ghosts of past guests (The Shining), strange noises emanate from your neighbour’s room (Barton Fink), creepy paintings hang on the wall (1408) and the receptionist dresses up in his dead mum’s clothes to hack through your shower curtain (Psycho).
But only now are they cottoning on to the well of terror that is the online holiday rental. As in June’s Men, here a careless flick through Airbnb sends an innocent young woman to a scary neighbourhood to sleep alone in a stranger’s weird house.
Director Zach Cregger begins with an old horror staple – the stormy night – as Tess (Georgina Campbell) pulls up in a rented car at an address in Detroit that she should have checked on Google Maps.
There is no key in the safe and her host isn’t answering the phone. Then a light in the living room throws up the gangly shadow of a man…
Keith (Bill Skarsgård), opens the door. He claims he’s booked the house on a different app and offers to crash on the sofa and give
Tess the only bedroom. As Skarsgård is best known for playing evil clown Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT, hackles go up as soon as he flashes that killer smile.
And Cregger toys with horrorsavvy audiences for the next hour and a half, inviting us to scream at the screen as Tess is taken in by her unexpected housemate and takes ill-advised tours of the dark basement with its dodgy electrics.
Still, you won’t see the many twists coming. This heady cocktail of scares, gore and dark comedy is this year’s Halloween treat.
Film-makers are cottoning on to the well of terror that is the online holiday rental