The movie is best before the mayhem actually starts: First-time writer-director Bryan Bertino gets right some priceless details as the couple try to deal with the evening's earlier fallout, and elevates his movie above other horror films.

The formula of calm followed by shock is repeated until one tires of the technical polish of Bryan Bertino's directorial debut (with nods towards Funny Games and the French Them?) in the absence of coherent plot or character development.

Bertino's directorial smarts are on display from the first slow-cut montage of rural homes glimpsed from the window of a moving car. It's a passage suggesting free-floating, arbitrary menace.

This anemic "torture porn" thriller isn't scary, just tedious.