Intriguing and thoughtful suspense murder thriller

Rating: 8/10 (5 July 2011)

After a rather puzzling introduction sequence we find ourselves in the company of a motley group of individuals all of whom are stranded at a remote motel when bad weather washes the road out. There is some friction between them - not unexpected - but it doesn't seem sufficient to explain away the disappearance of one of their number, subsequently found dead. Is it one of their number, or someone else? Then another member of the group dies...
All this seems familiar enough stuff and, indeed, it is. Up to about the halfway mark. Then we realise that the fact that everyone is trapped here has some significance, and the movie goes in a direction which - to me, at least - is entirely unexpected.
A decent cast, headed by John Cusack and Ray Liotta, play this for all it's worth. The material might not convince in other hands, but it is in safe hands here, and a film which starts out by pretending to be one thing and ends up as something quite different succeeds very well.
Highly recommended.