The Seasoning House

This début feature from British make-up effects artist Paul Hyett can’t decide if it wants to be an adult fairy tale, a claustrophobic thriller or a realistic depiction of the trafficking of young women in Balkan war zones. It’s sporadically suspenseful but chronically erratic in tone. It focuses on deaf mute teen Angel (Rosie Day), abducted from her family and forced to mop up the mess left by the soldiers who frequent Viktor’s house of sadistic sexual brutalisation – war-hardened veterans such as Goran (Sean Pertwee).

Tiny and agile, Angel starts to explore the tight spaces between the building’s walls: watching, learning and plotting her escape. But when a girl she has befriended is murdered, Angel turns avenging angel, before escaping into the brothel’s crawl spaces. Horror fans familiar with Hyett’s work on ‘Eden Lake’ or ‘The Descent 2’ may forgive his failure to blend the raw sexual violence and social comment with more familiar generic tropes, but the film’s downbeat switchback ending is neither convincing nor earned.