The Damned

Tautly orchestrated within its single setting and photographed and edited for maximum shock value, The Damned never really rises above its standard conventions. But its fast pacing and sheer air of conviction make it a better than average example of its overworked genre.

It's all well acted and expertly crafted — quick edits that play mind and visual games with the viewer, music that heightens tension, some cool special effects — but most of the victims are people you want to slap even before their secrets are spilled.

Playing characters with no real substance, the actors struggle to develop a sense of shared peril.

The script by Richard D'Ovidio is so packed with knuckleheaded moves and ultra-obvious dialogue ("Dad, there's something wrong with this place!") that the whole enterprise proves more risible than frightening.

You won't get much back story, and the action is fairly generic. But The Damned still makes for a serviceable horror flick, with better performances than a movie of this caliber usually offers.

From its first draw of blood onward, it bolts down a foreseeable slasher-movie trajectory, laying on thick the dramatic irony while constantly inventing new reasons to punish its characters for old iniquities.