Havenhurst is a comfortable, aging, sprawling apartment building that now serves as a halfway home for recovering addicts who need a helping hand on their road to recovery. Run by kindly old Eleanor Mudgett (Fionnula Flanagan), the building has a nasty habit of disappearing people who break the house rules and go back to their evil ways.

Jackie (Julie Benz) shows up after a drunk driving tragedy and, coincidentally (or not? It’s unclear), gets the same room as a friend of hers who vanished recently.  She meets a young girl at the home, Sarah (Belle Shouse), who does a great job appearing timid and scared and overwhelmed by the activities around her. Her messed-up foster parents take turns making her life miserable, and Sarah becomes more and more attached to Jackie as they delve deeper into the building’s mysteries.

All to the tune of distant screams and moans coming from the other side of the walls.

This is a really good thriller, with some heavy dollops of blood and graphic gore splattered throughout.  Little clues to the real story behind the halfway home, and the true identities of the family that runs the place, kept me on my toes and made me go, “Ooooohhh…” as the idea lightbulb started flickering. 

There’s a rather tired sidestory where a cop is secretly meeting Jackie to try to help find her missing friend. Jackie is sure that something bad happened to her (spoiler alert: it did) and she is also sure the creepy Mudgetts did it (spoiler alert: oh, you know).  Unfortunately, these scenes they have together are boring and perfunctory and don’t really add to the tension much. They could have easily been edited out to make the whole film even more claustrophobic than it already is.

Minor quibble. I still had great fun watching this movie. It’s creepy and dark and a little gross and nicely bloody, but not gratuitously so. It’s a good balance. The stunts that happen are pretty incredible, too. People are thrown up against walls (both vertically and horizontally), they fall from ladders and down laundry chutes–the stunts were just as impressive as anything else.

The ending wants to be more clever and “gotcha” than it really is, but it’s still satisfying and made me give out an impressed evil chuckle when it went in that direction. Director Andrew C. Erin deserves much praise for Havenhurst; being able to deliver such gothic menace, without becoming silly or overwrought, is a high achievement. Uncle Mike sez to definitely check this out.

Just stay away from the walls.

Pre-order Havenhurst on iTunes

Havenhurst is in theaters and on VOD February 10.