8 Found Dead review – corpse-strewn property horror finds the hell in holiday rental

Double booking is the least of the worries awaiting the vacationers arriving at this desert home

Whether or not you think it deserves it, the online property-hire business Airbnb is taking a pasting of late, and now even horror films are piling in to sully its name. In this snappily edited film, a house in the desert near Joshua Tree national park (judging by the local flora) appears to have been double-booked, leading to murderous results. They complain about the circular frustration created by their inability to compare booking confirmations because they don't have the code for the house's wifi, which is accessible only on the Airbnb app, which they can't access because of lack of wifi or phone signal. Typical first-world problems.

But the director, Travis Greene, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Buchanan, have more on their minds than shaming the booking service, mainly how to make the different crisscrossing timelines in the story make narrative sense without continuity errors, as the film cuts between four time periods in a single day. In the first, property co-owner Jessie shows up to clean a bungalow full of twee, millennial-friendly knick-knacks, as if the set designer went mad with a credit card in Urban Outfitters. At a different point that day, we see Instagram influencer Sam (Alisha Soper) and her actor boyfriend Dwayne (William Gabriel Grier)arrive at the house and unexpectedly meet a creepy middle-aged couple named Liz (Rosanne Limeres) and Richard (Tim Simek) already there, and insistent they have hired the place.