Atmospherically photographed by Peter Deming (his films include Mulholland Drive, Screams, Drag Me to Hell), this directorial debut by the author of Cloverfield is a forceful, funny, frightening and ingenious horror flick. It starts out with that familiar situation of a party of college kids spending a boozy, drunken, libidinous weekend at a remote cottage in the woods. They're being observed by a mysterious conspiracy of international scientists, possibly a less benign branch of the organisation producing The Truman Show. It ends apocalyptically, and is ultimately a postmodernist, self-referential metaphor for horror movies, their makers and their audience.