Supernatural: No Exit

The introduction of Ellen's Roadhouse into the Supernatural mythology has become the perfect launch pad for adventures without the need for Sam and Dean to continually be stumbling over hunts.

As a gathering point for hunters, this has quickly becomes the televisual equivalent of the old Dungeons & Dragons stereotype that every adventure starts with a stranger approaching the party of adventurers in a bar.

However, in Supernatural the set-up has a certain verisimiltude that has so far kept it out of cliche country.

In No Exit the Winchester brothers are given a case file worked up by Jo (Ellen's daughter) that she had intended to follow up herself - against her mother's wishes.

The hunt leads to a warehouse conversion in Philadelphia, where a young girl has just gone missing. Unfortunately for the Winchester boys young Jo (who looks barely into her teens) has followed them and barges her way into their schemes.

The brothers do their usual research legwork and discover that the flat-conversion was built on the site where H.H. Holmes - America's first serial killer - was hung. And the torturer is back in business, using the insides of the walls to recreate his gruesome "murder castle".

Once it gets to the meat of the story, No Exit is as tense as any Hostel-style torture-porn movie - but without the gore - mixed in with some genuinely spooky moments as the ghost of Holmes captures Jo and locks her inside her little piece of Hell.

This episode mainly concentrates on Jo and Dean, as Sam always seems to be "elsewhere" and I can only assume that Jared Padalecki, still sporting the broken wrist the zombie gave him back in Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, was either resting or off filming something else.