Robbie Collin

A wild and righteous provocation.

Thanks to one of the most indestructible poster campaigns ever designed, the words Les Misérables can’t help but call a child’s face to mind.

Leigh Whannell’s film – one of the smartest and scariest yet to roll off the production line at horror specialists Blumhouse.

Children encountering the faux-ET format for the first time may enjoy it well enough, but signs of life, extra or otherwise, are low to nil.

While writers Lena Waithe and James Frey make Queen and Slim’s initial decision to flee convincing, and dramatically spiky – it’s striking that even a lawyer doesn’t fancy her chances on the legal route – their screenplay is rather less good at coming up with excuses for the string of colourful and picturesque pit-stops the two keep making afterwards.

Showy and ambitious, desperately sincere and self-absorbed, and bursting at the seams with potential, Waves isn’t merely a film about teenagers, it’s virtually a teenager in film form. It’s also the kind of cinema that keeps you young.

I can’t recall the last time I was so staggered by a film’s craftsmanship while feeling almost nothing else about it at all – little fear, less sadness, and barely a spark of actual excitement at anything beyond the high-wire nature of the filmmaking enterprise itself.