Metacritic reviews

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.

A muscular exercise in brutal, relentless peril that should please genre fans.

Alvarez proves adept at springing surprises in these moments, a skill that combines all the art and technique of moviemaking with the architecture of 3D level-planning and the carny showmanship of building a professional haunted house.

The film's sustainment of its corkscrew tension is so elegant and methodical as to feel dance-like.

Alvarez’s visual flair and handle on tone can only mask his paper-thin characters and motivations for so long.

There is an unpredictability to the film that is, at times, refreshing. This unpredictability turns into meandering, however, leading to narrative incoherence at many points.