Retreat (Carl Tibbetts, 2011)

A married couple at a crisis point take themselves away to try to refind their spark and then a disquieting stranger is imposed on them who soon starts messing with their heads. Yes, it's Dead Calm transposed to the Highlands and Islands, with an additional overlay of 28 Days Later with the suggestion of a pandemic having taken over the rest of the world. Newbie director Tibbetts may want to defend himself against that charge, but Polanski's Knife in the Water had already got the penetrating psychological angles down pat 50 years ago and Phillip Noyce's underrated 1989 slasher worked the more overt violence to its limits. What could possibly be left to say? It's not that this is an incompetent work, just stale, and seemingly unaware that merely changing the setting does not make for a pointful exercise. Additionally, you really start wishing for a gutsy Nicole Kidman instead of the insipid Thandie Newton as the conflicted wife, and this is the crux of the problem: it's watered down despite its pretensions at grittiness.

4/10