The first thing the film-makers did wrong was to relocate it to Wales - shorthand I guess for the sort of back of beyond destination where Old Nick might have a holiday cottage - and then shoot it in New Jersey.
There's a portentous shopkeeper in a bizarre village store who has the right kind of accent, but really, this is POOR.
Kevin Bacon stars and also lists himself as 'producer', indicative of the movie's status as a sort of vanity project for the actor, who works to spoil it by never really working out if he is to be hero or villain.
On the plus side, there's the house, the sort of gaff you'd never come across in the real Wales, and not just because it's a kind of evil TARDIS with enhanced interior dimensions along with visually-interesting aesthetics in both the rooms and the stretchy connecting corridors.
And there's the appearance of young Avery Essex, laying down one of those performances, like Elle Fanning in 2004's The Door In The Floor, foretelling a worthwhile career beyond childhood.
Yet overall it's a masterclass in the squandered build-up.
One review I came across had the waggish remark that, if we had been permitted to see it in cinemas, the title is basically what most audience-members would no doubt have been thinking at the conclusion.
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