As a thriller and suspense movie, this has been one of the best for the sub-horror genre in a long time. It's not a slasher, nothing to do with spirits of any kind, just a straight-up suspense-thriller.
Watching the trailers I didn't think much of the movie to be honest, but after its release, so much positive word-of-mouth has convinced me to buy my ticket.
What writer and director Fede Alvarez did for the movie was just spectacular as he set the pace and tone early on and kept at it from beginning until the end. The way he moved his camera inside the house, from the top floor down to the basement to give viewers an idea of what the space was like in each level; and then creating suspense through situations without any pretensions; I had to keep telling myself to relax as my whole body kept tensing up.
Here's a movie that didn't matter who the actors were or how talented they are. Put anyone in the roles of Jane Levy, Dylan Minette or Daniel Zovatto and Alvarez will still be able to make it work because he had such a handle on what he wanted to do with the direction. This is a rare occurrence.
One cast member I would argue for was Stephen Lang. He embodied terror and fear, much like Batman but just more human. Lang has always been badass but never this scary.
My favourite sequence would have to be Alvarez's direction when it was all pitch black for the characters. That was an incredible piece of work, one that I would never forget.
I also noticed there was a scene from the Red Band trailer that wasn't included in this movie, a scene which perhaps humanized Minnette's character a bit more as he called his father. I'm glad that wasn't in the final cut of the movie because every scene was used to maximum effect with no frames wasted.
My only nitpick would be the plausibility of Lang's character to be able to do a few things that he could given that he's blind. But other than that, I enjoyed this immensely.
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