Dazed and Confused star Jason London leaves us, well, dazed and confused, in a film that is part drama, part horror and part tired unoriginal bore-fest that looks nice enough but can’t find its feet.

Robert Englund, you may remember him from such films as A Nightmare on Elm Street parts 1-7 and Freddy Vs. Jason, also makes an appearance but fails to add anything, getting just as lost as the audience.

Brett (London) is a former cop still struggling with the death of his wife, who cut her own throat. Her brutal suicide gives him disturbing recurring nightmares and when his best friend advises him that it’s finally time to leave the past where it belongs, he takes a job as a live-in security guard in a beautiful old apartment building in Sofia, Bulgaria, to banish his awful memories and start anew.

The job is exactly what he needs, stress free and well paid but the owners are on edge and give him cause to question the role that seems a little too good to be true. He is shown around and taken to the basement, or the door to the basement, a beautiful wooden gate with intricate carvings that must be kept locked at all times.

The job entails watching a wall of monitors that show a live feed from the dark basement behind the door and in the unlikely event that anything should happen, or appear, he is to contact ‘Jacob.’

At first, although the owners have given him pause for thought, the job is going well but the nightmares return and when he meets, and later beds, the very cute coffee shop girl Zara (Kamburova), who tells him sinister stories about the old building, he begins to look into the history and piece together a story that might just start to explain a few things.

One night he sees movement in the basement and calls Jacob (Englund), a blind man who turns up to check out the situation. We soon discover that Jacob once held the Security Guard position many years ago but despite Brett’s many questions, Jacob remains as tight lipped as the owners. This doesn’t last however, as the strange goings on in the basement increase and Brett begins to lose time with no explanation. Jacob soon has to tell him that there are dark forces at work and the only thing between them and evil is the wooden door.

Although the door is the only line of defence, Brett, Zara and Jacob must go inside and discover why there is suddenly movement after such a long period of silence. This of course doesn’t go well and the film ramps up from brooding drama to derivative horror, as all hell literally breaks loose.

Director Patricio Valladares (Hidden in the Woods) gets the best out of his cast and creates a wonderfully good-looking film. The problem is that we’ve just been here before too many times and long gone is Englund’s ability to add gravitas to a film with his mere presence.

London is solid and there are some nice moments of eeriness that build and build but can’t quite find the gratifying explosion of horror at the end.