While there’s a trend for resurrecting and remaking 70s fright favourites (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, The Amityville Horror), several filmmakers have also tried to relive those halcyon days of horror exploitation through their own original projects. Unfortunately, for every awesome success (eg, Rob Zombie’s House Of 1000 Corpses), there is a slew of miserable failures (eg, Eli Roth’s messy Cabin Fever). Now, thanks to debut feature director Nicholas Mastandrea, viewers get the opportunity for a real fear-flashback to the kind of fare that scared cinemagoers shitless three decades ago.

Having worked on and off since 1977 alongside zombie king George A Romero and A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Wes Craven, Mastandrea should know his craft. And he proves he does, by taking the genre-typical simple storyline and splicing it with so much tension and carnage that even the most blasé gorehound will be slavering in the aisles.

Lost’s Michelle Rodriguez stars as one of five student-types who visit a cabin on an isolated island for the weekend. Unbeknown to them, their retreat is populated by a pack of genetically modified attack-dogs – and they’re ravenous as fuck. Mastandrea makes the most of his relatively unknown (unless you’re a geek for American teen TV) cast, even when they have to spout corny one-liners about every dog in cinema history, from Lassie to Cujo.

He steers the action down all the right routes and makes excellent use of the desolate location, the film’s only downside being its somewhat flaccid opening. And this actually proves to be the calm before the storm, as once the killer canines set their sights on savaging the humans, the shock-o-meter goes into overdrive. Don’t say we didn’t warn you: this is one of the most adrenaline-charged terror rides you’ll witness this year.