Clearly drawing on Hitchcock and early Stephen King, a couple and their eight-year-old daughter are vacationing in an idyllic isolated forest cabin, when they are visited by a group of four determined strangers, who inform them that they must sacrifice one of their family in order to prevent the Apocalypse. After a somewhat talky and laboured opening, the stakes are suddenly raised dramatically, but the story and premise is so limited that this is barely a half-hour Twilight Zone episode stretched out to movie length, even with the largely-superfluous family flashbacks that pad it out and attempt to give rather blunt (and unnecessary) depth to the couple's story. Nevertheless, the performances are good all round, Shyamalan's direction is unshowy, but the story never has the necessary impact it should have.
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