Next of Kin was sold as a slasher film, after the vogue that was at its height around the time with films like Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). But excepting in the last few minutes, Next of Kin belongs more to a genre that is far older than the slasher film – the psycho-thriller genre. Indeed the ancestors of Next of Kin stretch as far back as Old Dark House thrillers like The Bat (1926) and The Cat and the Canary (1927). Jackie Kerin is a modern descendent of Laura La Plante in the The Cat and the Canary. Here she is stalked through a retirement home instead of a big, creaky old manor but in all other ways Next of Kin is a standard Old Dark House thriller. There are even creaky old plot devices about diaries left by the mother and mad relatives in disguise, which are all standard elements of the Old Dark House genre.

Certainly Next of Kin is directed with a good deal more atmosphere than usual for a slasher film – like the moment when Charles McCallum unwittingly steps on a drowned face as he goes to get into the bath, or the image of an eye being stabbed through a keyhole. But the reliance on an elliptical story, which unfolds slackly, makes Next of Kin rather slow moving. An inexpressive electronic score does not help either. Nor are logic and conviction high points of the script, which requires diaries conveniently left about open to just the right page and one physiologically absurd scene wherein a person’s blood becomes the water spouting out of a fountain.