Hell Night

Four fraternity and sorority pledges have to spend the night in Garth Manor, a gothic pile where the family killed itself years ago and, rumour has it, one deformed survivor never left. Linda Blair, a decade on from The Exorcist, anchors it, and Tom DeSimone stages the whole thing as an old-dark-house chiller of candelabras, secret passages and cobwebs rather than gore, which sets it apart from the Friday the 13th crowd it opened against. Produced by the man behind Halloween, it carries more craft and mood than its reputation suggests. Nothing here reinvents the form. It just does the haunted-mansion slasher with unusual care.