Nikki Baughan

While The Boogeyman — based on the 1973 Stephen King short story about a closet-dwelling stealer of souls — is as narratively generic as its on-the-nose (and oft-used) title may suggest, British director Rob Savage brings an innate humanness and playful spirit that lifts this otherwise-rote monster movie.

Essentially a four-handed chamber piece of sorts, this adaptation deals with powder-keg themes of the colonial psyche, racial tensions and retribution, but ultimately proves too stilted and stagey to pack much of a punch.

A moving exploration of the realities of growing old, Maite Alberdi’s documentary effectively blends documentary with dramatic elements to charming, if not always transparent, effect.

Successfully mining the awkward humour of the adolescent experience, Karen Maine’s coming-of-age feature makes the most of a strong central performance from Natalia Dyer.

The Convert promises the potential for plenty of fire and brimstone but, despite some committed performances, lacks the dramatic passion that would have really left a mark.

The chemistry between these three is the film’s greatest strength, and Good Grief plays best as a love story between friends.

In their scenes together, Clear and Duggan spark beautifully, navigating their characters’ emotional highs and lows with a mix of caustic wit and often moving vulnerability.

It’s certainly got the Perkins style and plenty of genuine chills, but the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

Freud aside, this is a fairly straightforward boy-to-man narrative, but that it plays out during such a turbulent time in Austrian history brings additional texture.

Exceptional performances, particularly from Caleb Landry Jones in the lead, and a sensitive touch from director Justin Kurtzel can’t shake the unease of giving yet another cinematic spotlight to a real-life mass murderer.

The two actors manage to capture the vulnerabilities that come with opening yourself up to someone else, particularly at such a delicate age.

While the film is contemplative, intimate and visually arresting, its deliberately slow pace lessens its dramatic impact.

As with all Stephen King stories, there are resonant universal themes running through Pet Sematary; guilt, grief and trauma fuel this tale of a family who move to the countryside and become embroiled with an ancient evil. Yet these are buried deep under a mudslide of horror cliches — jump scares, creepy kids, expositional newspaper headlines — that reduce this to just another run-of-the-mill horror remake.

Jacki Weaver is excellent in this colourful culture-clash comedy which, despite an uneven tone, offers a welcome message about the power of love and acceptance.

Part cringe-comedy, part diagnostic study of the modern pandemic of male loneliness, Friendship has several inspired moments, and strong performances from Robinson and Rudd. Ultimately, however, its determination to straddle both camps means it stretches itself rather too thin.

A raw central performance from Danielle Deadwyler brings some depth to this Blumhouse thriller, which otherwise maintains a creepy atmosphere but mostly trades in familiar psychological horror tropes and an abundance of jump scares.

This is an undeniably moving story, and Winson — who died in 2015 aged 106 — a man worth honouring, but One Life comes across as an orchestrated tearjerker.

Eternal You acts like a modern day Wizard Of Oz as it lifts the curtain on the intricate processes of bringing the dead to life.

This Running Man could have been a powerful anarchist fable for our turbulent times but fun as it is, it runs out of steam before making any lasting impact.

This earnest drama wears its politics very much on its sleeve — and makes no apologies for doing so — although its intimate take on an overwhelming moment in history can make for some compelling drama.

While that familiarity is Scream VI’s major strength, it has also become its fundamental flaw. The location may have changed, the kills may be increasingly inventive, but underneath all that window dressing it’s the same as it ever was.

The narrative is often nonsensical, and the dialogue can lean towards the risible, but the action is kinetic and Statham as watchable as ever.

This remake of the 2022 Danish-language chiller maintains much of what made the original so effective but, in swapping that film’s shocking ending for a more audience-friendly take, loses some of its bite. Nevertheless, a striking performance from James McAvoy keeps things interesting.

The Devil Wears Prada has become something of a modern classic, thanks largely to its eminently quotable, whip-smart observations about the world of fashion and its enduring sense of style. It’s unsurprising, then, that this sequel (again directed by David Frankel) is cut from exactly the same cloth, deliberately designed to be a narrative retread – albeit with a few Gen Z updates – that should delight existing fans.

There are some fun moments in Sharper, not to mention its attractive production and costume design, and Moore is clearly having a blast with a character who is sexy and smart in equal measure. But with the story broken down into obvious individual character-focused jigsaw pieces, viewers won’t need many of their own wits about them to guess where this tale is headed.

Returning director Gerard Johnstone does not feel the need to rewrite the code, delivering a tried-and-tested mix of action, effects and comedy. Yet the whole thing now feels overly self-aware, resulting in a lumbering actioner that lacks the novelty value of its predecessor.

This tale of a bestselling spy novelist who finds herself embroiled in real life espionage has some fun moments, an impressive cast and explosive set pieces (not to mention some strong echoes of classic eighties adventure series Romancing The Stone) but, in its attempts to keep audiences guessing, ties itself up in knots.

In its determination to maintain a glossy, upbeat tone throughout — even when dealing with an event that, as a final sombre title card tells us, saw ‘over 30,000 people killed or disappeared’ — The Penguin Lessons proves to be neither fish nor fowl.