Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a guy with no money and a violent past who needs to disappear for a while, wanders into a travelling carnival where the most stomach-turning attraction is a haunted-house show that plunges punters into a nightmare inferno of the Last Judgment, a hideous honeycomb of bulging eyes. Stan finds that the hatchet-faced guys running things can always use people like him to help with hard, dirty work, paying a few bucks and asking no questions. But Stan is a cut above the usual hobos and losers; he’s a likely fellow with a personable manner and an inquiring mind and he’s intrigued by the cheesy mind-reading act run by Zeena (Toni Collette) and her boozy husband Pete (David Strathairn). Instantly, Stan grasps the art of the mind-reader: to learn the secret verbal codewords fed to him by his partner, but also to use his natural observant powers to see what sort of a person is in front of him and pick up on clues.

After a sinister act of violence – of which he is all too capable – Stan marries fellow carnival huckster Molly (Rooney Mara) and moves with her to Chicago where their high-class act in hotel showrooms becomes the toast of the town. And then he comes across someone else in the mind-reading game: Lilith Ritter, gorgeously played by Cate Blanchett, a fashionable psychoanalyst with peroxide hair, a slash of lipstick, a gigantic art deco consulting room and a brace of wealthy clients. She makes him a terrible offer.

This film has a horribly ingenious premise and there is something chilling in the central concept: Stan’s mind-reading spiritualist routine, though deeply dishonest, is in fact founded on a set of truths about human nature which are revealed to the seedy huckster but not to the educated person who might affect to despise the showman’s preposterous act. Every person thinks their background is their own unique secret, and everyone is indeed haunted by a certain someone, someone who is always near them, someone whom they love and hate at the same time. That person is a parent. And Stan’s mind-reading is, in its way, entirely genuine.