Review: 'You Should Have Left' is a deceptively quiet thriller that gives Kevin Bacon a place to shine in the dark

The haunted-house thriller “You Should Have Left” is a mind twister from the old school, and a showcase for Kevin Bacon to quietly give a viewer goosebumps.

Bacon plays Theo Conroy, whose backstory is best left to screenwriter-director David Koepp to unspool a bit at a time. What you need to know going in is that he’s the much-too-old husband of Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), a movie actress with whom he shares a cushy house in the Hollywood hills, a robust sex life, and a very perceptive six-year-old daughter, Ella (Avery Essex, who’s eerily grounded for a child actor).

Something, a reminder of Theo’s past, prompts both Theo and Susanna to want to get out of L.A. for awhile. So they find a cool rental house in Wales, and the three head off for a vacation in the green hills, far from cellphone reception and other cares, with only their suitcases and emotional baggage — which turns out to be the key to what happens the rest of the way.

Koepp, adapting a novel by German author Daniel Kehlmann, sets up the traps, jump scares and dank recesses of a solid horror film. As a veteran screenwriter (he’s had a career of blockbusters from “Jurassic Park” to the last version of “The Mummy”), Koepp knows the clockwork timing needed for a script, and when to drop each morsel of exposition and when to hold back secrets for maximum effect.

He’s nicely teamed with Bacon — a reunion from the 1999 horror thriller “Stir of Echoes,” which Koepp directed — and gets good mileage out of the veteran actor. Bacon, still lean and hungry at 61, conveys the fear, resentment, fatherly love and Catholic guilt that bubble up inside Theo, each emotion surfacing when called upon to propel the movie’s tension.

“You Should Have Left” is a slow build, and Koepp ratchets the suspense so gradually a viewer may be lulled into thinking there’s not much happening. But, at a certain point, the realization comes how much Koepp as been toying with us from the beginning, to get us to a satisfying and chilling conclusion.

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‘You Should Have Left’

★★★

Debuting Friday, June 19, as a video-on-demand on most streaming platforms. Rated R for some violence, disturbing images, sexual content and language. Running time: 93 minutes.