Until that moment, the film, directed by John Polson from a first screenplay by Ari Schlossberg, functions as a serviceable if relentlessly derivative psychological thriller, with the presence of Robert De Niro and young Dakota Fanning helping to distract from its cobbled-together feel. [...] while audiences love to be scared, they're not so fond of being messed with, and though the genre's die-hard faithful might initially come out, come out, wherever they are, damaging word-of-mouth will likely hasten the trek from the screen to the video racks. Having put his slow boil to effective use dealing with all those Fockers, De Niro plays it much closer to the vest as David Callaway, a recently widowed psychologist whose daughter Emily (Fanning in a spooky role to match her spooky talent) has been traumatized by the violent death of her mother (a briefly seen Amy Irving).

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