It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Some of the comments on this film seem a little unreasonable. This is an enjoyable and refreshing take on clichés within the terror genre, and the actresses are particularly good and make it well worth watching.Somebody made a comment about this being similar to the Hammer House of Horror TV series, and I'd agree with that and say it's a pretty good summation of the feel of the story. How refreshing to see a story that doesn't charge forward with an alpha male in the lead, and that doesn't make it's heroines into soppy losers. This is a really fun horror, doesn't amp up any violence gratuitously, does a good job of creating it's mood and whilst I wouldn't recommend going out of one's way to find it, it's worth the time.One quibble, which would seem fair, Michael Elphick, god rest his soul, is wasted. Looks like this was his last role.

In the 1970s this modest entry would have been a 60-minute TV episode from an anthology such as Brian Clemens's "Thriller" or "Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense". To make it feature-length, too many false endings have been tacked on; but the substance is just about intriguing enough to keep a late-night television viewer (if not, apparently, a British distributor) watching to the positively final climax.A girls' boarding school at half term affords plenty of shots of the heroine, Sophia Myles, creeping along deserted corridors and entering empty rooms, or being walked in on by a trio of sinister older women. Miss Myles, very much in the buxom English rose mould of Kate Winslet, acquits herself competently without lurching into the irritating extremes of scream queen on the one hand or dopey wide-eyed dupe on the other: she projects intelligence as well as courage. Sophie Ward as her steely headmistress and Celia Imrie-- in a role as an art-dealing doctor which is outside her normal persona as a glamorous but trustworthy Scotch matron-- keep audiences guessing about their motives. The men are not as satisfactory. Sophia's object of adulterous affection, an American art teacher married to Ms Ward, is less a character than a McGuffin. Michael Elphick, sadly bloated in his last big-screen appearance, has little to do. The soundtrack is too replete with creepy music: the natural sounds of a big old building in the depths of the English countryside could have been used more. There are a few wince-making genre clichés, such as Sophia flinching when a sheet is pulled back and she has to ID a disfigured corpse. But this is a British suspenser which keeps its language clean, aims above the gut and avoids mid-Atlanticism. It deserved better than a late-night BBC1 premiere without even a write-up in the 'Radio Times'; if the BBC had produced it as a TV movie, they would have talked it up.

How rare to find a film that depends less on special effects and "in-your-face" horror, and leans more towards suspense and implied danger. Just as a good paperback thriller makes one want to turn the page, watching this, one wants to leap off the sofa to protect the young protagonists! The lack of exotic locations suggests a rather tight budget, but the story is none the worse for it. After all, an old motel, a shower curtain and a bit of up-lighting served Alfred Hitchcock rather well! Good performances from experienced stage performers and newcomers. This is the sort of piece the UK national broadcaster should be commissioning, not the kitchen-sink dramas that plague UK TV screens. The director should be applauded for taking that old staple, the murder mystery, and giving it an entertaining and contemporary twist.

I thought this was a fantastic English thriller, and very well cast. It was gripping, the twists were fantastic, and it was lovely seeing that a great film can be made without spending a ridiculous budget. As a girl who has been to boardingschool it really was thrilling! I'd highly recommend it!