Stories about people battling their inner demons and facing the consequences of their past actions are nothing new. And screenwriter-director David Koepp mines this landscape for a moody-if-inert haunted house romp which stumbles its way to the climax while riding on the coattails of mind-bending visuals that somehow manage to keep it from collapsing on itself. The labyrinthine rental home in Wales, which the Conroys check into for a quick getaway, appears to be larger on the inside, its maze-like structure quickly turning from confusing to creepy, mirroring the fractured mind of the protagonist and effectively trapping him in its mysterious hallways and ever-shifting dimensions. What the film builds up in mystery, it unravels clumsily, deflating the tension as new revelations come forth and the house's mutating architecture coming off as gimmicky attempts to explain actual psychology. The perfunctory scares, telegraphed and unfolding with an algorithmic precision, fail to rattle and merely amount to pale imitations of many other works. Despite some effectively staged moments,
You Should Have Left is unremarkable and best left unexplored. It's time to heed to the title!
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