Some frightening scenes and effective writing distinguish this from the run of the mill house-where-something-horrible-has-happened movies, and it maintained a decent level of suspense until about the final twenty minutes - as usual, once the truth is revealed it ceases to be in the least bit frightening. Ethan Hawke was outstanding as the true-crime writer who has rented the scene of a truly unpleasant family murder without mentioning this to his own family. He's so desperate to write another best-selling book that even when disagreeably scary things begin to occur in the house he's reluctant to leave it and puts his own family at risk. The denouement is very silly and disappointing but up till then it was pretty good.