Horror movie characters aren't generally known for their brains, but these ones make enough bad choices that audiences won't be able to help yelling at the screen (at least ours couldn't). It's a frustrating experience at times, but the script from Ben Ketai and "The Strangers" filmmaker Bryan Bertino eventually allows the family to take some satisfying actions in the second half of the film.

The Outsider is a slick copy of multiple, much-better films and TV series. It's so well-polished it's practically featureless.

The threat of violence churns beneath nearly every frame of this poised and coolly disturbing movie, but Finley's diabolical sense of mischief is held in check — and in some ways amplified — by his discretion.

Iannucci's take-no-prisoners directorial style is perfect for this blackest of farces.

By turns gorgeous, propulsive and feverishly overwrought, A Wrinkle in Time is an otherworldly glitter explosion of a movie, the kind of picture that wears its heart on its tie-dyed sleeve.

But Deliver Us From Evil has no tonal cohesion, and the amateur editing from Coates only exacerbates the issue.

Directed by Eli Roth with the same knowing smirk that has informed his previous exercises in self-satisfied bloodletting ("Cabin Fever," "The Green Inferno," the "Hostel" movies), the movie is a slick, straightforward revenge thriller as well as a sham provocation, pandering shamelessly to the viewer's bloodlust while trying to pass as self-aware satire. Your time, to say nothing of your outrage, is much better spent elsewhere.

The visually arresting, wickedly entertaining crime drama Pickings marks an impressive narrative feature directing debut by Usher Morgan, who also wrote, edited and produced. He's a talent to watch.

No easy path to forgiveness and communication, this one, but as a tour-de-force howl of primal, damaged rage, it contributes in its own strange way to the current era of public reckoning and testy healing.

Because of that private connection, Hondros is definitely a personal documentary, with the loss and pain Campbell is still experiencing taking center stage more often than might be ideal. But that connection also leads to some detours that might not have happened otherwise, sequences that show what made Hondros special as a photographer and a person.

By sticking closely to a heroine who's skating on the edge of sanity, the film keeps the audience properly disoriented. Darkness runs deep in "The Lullaby," rooted in the never-ending conflict between mothers and daughters.

The many ridiculous tragedies are just there to slather showy woundedness on a weak, annoying character, leaving The Vanishing of Sidney Hall a mystery-free mystery with an inexhaustible supply of eye-rolling postures.

This cute movie hits all the heartwarming notes — adorable seniors, sassy gender-noncomforming kid and a love interest for Irene. It all wraps up perfectly, and though it can seem a bit pat, "Don't Talk to Irene" is sincere enough to earn it.

The Ramsay brothers are attracted to all the grisly stuff found at the junction between noir-tinged thrillers and scarlet-hued horror, although the plotting here isn't as tightly coiled and the characters aren't as delineated as obviously intended.

Mohawk is a gripping and despairing action picture, about how we can't seem to stop trying to destroy those we distrust — including ourselves.

Within the confines of this cross-cultural shaggy-dog tale, Hirayanagi locates both a sharp vein of absurdist comedy and a bitter, melancholy undertow. She also has a deft enough touch to make one mode almost indistinguishable from the other.

Simultaneously effective and uninspired, Red Sparrow is successful in fits and starts. A perfectly serviceable spy thriller, it inevitably leaves behind the feeling that a better film was possible than the one that made it to the screen.

This folk tale braids together the primordial and the divine in endlessly surprising ways.

Director Noh Dong-seok — working from a Kôtarô Isaka novel — fills the film with rich detail, helping this "innocent man, wrongly accused" story overcome its dogged conventionality.

The references, conscious and not, serve as constant reminders to the audience of other, better, movies, rendering Mute more atonal hodgepodge than carefully orchestrated pastiche.

The film feels like it doesn't hit its stride until two-thirds of the way through, when Davis unleashes Kendrick. It's a clever premise, and there are some great performances, including Kendrick's, but a few story elements are fumbled to the film's detriment.

7 Guardians of the Tomb should be a B-movie blast, but it never seems aware of its own silliness.

Experiencing Beast of Burden's inept dialogue and uninspiring direction on screen is a continual trial.

Ben Parker's feature directorial debut never takes full advantage of its small setting, resulting in a grim thriller that isn't as compelling as it might have been in stronger hands.

The Lodgers isn't especially frightening, but as the story of people weighed down by their legacies, it is genuinely haunting.

Adapted by Jesse Andrews, the movie speaks toward the truth that appearances — including one's race and gender — shouldn't matter in love and relationships. It's a thought-provoking concept that makes "Every Day" more ambitious than your average teen romance, which only makes it all the more disappointing that it simply remains an average teen romance.

Writer-director Derek Nguyen's supernatural thriller settles confidently in a place between classy and trashy.

Andres Veiel's documentary Beuys, plays like a fan's flip book divorced from meaningful resonance.