Avery Malone, a wannabe writer and lonely librarian, gets her big break when she’s hand-selected to assist her hero, reclusive author, Caleb Conrad. Whisked away to Caleb’s remote estate, Avery is given her one and only task; to participate in a controlled psychological experiment in fear that will serve as the basis for Caleb’s next novel.

A reclusive horror writer (John Cassini) hires a naive young assistant (Sara Garcia) to stay with him in a remote cabin to help with his next novel.

To do this, he says, he must use her as a subject to study fear. They are locked together int he cabin and he hooks her to a polygraph while quizzing her and showing her scary movies.

In a Rebecca nod, she has the run of the house, but there is one locked door she cannot enter. (Classic movie references about. Conrad mentions The Third Man as a particular favorite.

Soon our ingenue is seeing and hearing things even when not hooked up to the author’s machine, and begins to suspect the game of scaring her might be dangerous for real.

Horror fans will immediately recognize clues to a “twist” ending, but the movie plays with expectations, and when the movie seems to be coming to an end you realize it’s still got almost half to go. There’s another turn. And another. And it was all foreshadowed, so while there are surprises, they don’t feel unearned.

Sara Garcia chews the scenery a bit, but her character is supposed to be a little hysterical from the start. John Cassini, as always, delivers a measured, even performance that hovers on the edge of menace in just the right way, leaving the viewer to keep wondering if he is the badguy that she fears he is. As soon as you make up your mind, something happens to make you — and her — doubt your call.

Avery holds a torch at the top of the basement stairs

Writer/Director Braden Croft doesn’t have a lot of credits to his name, but if this is going to be typical, you’ll want to watch out for what’s next. This is a well-crafted film that, while not perfect, delivers what I always look for in a horror film: characters worth caring about, and a few surprises that aren’t cheap jump scares.