Two decades on from the director-star pairing on the similarly-styled Stir Of Echoes, genre veterans David Koepp and Kevin Bacon try to inject life into very familiar tropes and only occasionally succeed. Lots of issues get thrown awkwardly into the mix in order try to make a difference to the material, such as the Americans-out-of-water Welsh setting, the age-gap relationship between Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried, the death - possibly murder - of Bacon's first wife and Bacon's partner's acting career and infidelity, but ultimately it comes down to a creepy battle with an oddly-inhospitable modern designer holiday house with a mysterious owner and inexplicably odd dimensions that do not match up (as in House Of Leaves). There is a stern and cold feel to the film that works well at times, but inevitably, the supernatural influences get ramped up and have their effect on the family in a run of quick-fire set pieces that never surprise, all leading to a fairly inevitable final scene. Bacon and Seyfried are as dependable as ever, but You Should Have Left proves to be an appropriate title for this underwhelming supernatural thriller.
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