This is a classic haunted house plot line executed with quite some style. Four people are sent to a spooky mansion to determine whether the afterlife exists – if they spend a week there they’ll each be rewarded with £100,000. The group consists of a psychic investigator and his wife plus two mediums, one of whom barely escaped the house with his life 20 years previously.

The tale unfolds in a cliched way – fog, leering statues and a malevolent cat, but it’s tempered by a minimalist edge. There’s little music and when it is used, it’s very effective (in a similar vein to Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) We’re given the time and date at the start of some scenes, as if it’s a scientific journal of events or a documentary. The cinematography is perfect with judicious use of unusual angles and lenses to create a surreal off beat effect.

Unfortunately, this film doesn’t quite reach the heights of other classics like ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ ‘The Haunting’ or ‘The Others’ because of it’s ending. I won’t spoil it here but suffice it to say that it’s unsatisfactory. It could have been fine if clues had been given throughout the movie – perhaps flashbacks to the tormented life of Belasco to help us understand the suffering and eventual madness he went through. As it stands, it seems pretty lame which is a shame as the rest of the movie is almost perfect.