Even in an oversaturated genre of increasingly diminished returns, Shelby Oaks is about as dispensable as it gets.

This is a movie whose absurdities need to be indulged.

Horror director Michelle Garza Cervera opts for the muted slow-burn (it’s a convincing argument for more studio work) and Winstead gives an earnest performance, the film for the most part existing in a recognisably grounded dramatic universe. But the plotting is often laughably hokey and its flashes of violence so distractingly grotesque that it’s never quite clear how seriously we should be taking any of this, a campy good time masquerading as prestige drama.

This is a family film with an IQ higher than the average – though before you book your half-term tickets, ask yourself if your little one is ready to watch a kid take a DIY flamethrower to the face of a scary monster.

& Sons doesn’t deliver on the promise of all its film-making talent but Nighy is always amusing.

This is a fascinating and neatly realised horror riff on the 2020s’ most popular genre.

Gender, sexuality, status and power are all in flux here, a playful effect that is however withdrawn when we arrive at the sacrificial seriousness. It is a sweet tale which floats self-consciously out of the screen.

It’s a terrific performance from Hawke.

Conti manages the feat of being funny, emotionally astute and kinda sexy throughout.

The issues are fundamentally the same: the enforced invisibility of a class of economic migrants who are now so numerous that many game the system, doubling their exploitation. Sangaré’s exemplary, unfeigned performance helps them speak.

A syrupy stream of EDM-style pop in assorted languages fills in the spaces where people aren’t talking, but ultimately it’s all too bland and banal to even be offensive or annoying.

At just under 2 hours, Black Phone 2, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of a new franchise. The next time it rings, I recommend not answering.

Any of Dahl’s gruesome sense of fun is obliterated by a bulldozing message of empathy and kindness, thanks to a plucky orphan Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and her pals pulling together an opposition to the Twits. This is vile and revolting in all the wrong ways.

This film really is a sunny delight as the weather turns cold.

It’s a movie of big moods and grand gestures, undercut by the banal inevitability of losing.

There’s an amazing lineup of collaborators and stars, and it’s good to see Candy’s uniquely likable and buoyant screen personality, but the tone borders on the stultifyingly reverential.

It sounds fun on the face of it, and the sheer silliness of the situation almost keeps it afloat, but the cardboard quality of the drama gets soggy.

Bertino doesn’t need to give us another Strangers, and we certainly do not need anything else in that particular universe, but he needs to give us something more striking, and certainly stranger, than Vicious.

The film is at its best when it homes in on the literary criticism – bringing in articulate readers of the text such as novelist Jay McInerney, who details the effort that went into making it look thrown together in a matter of weeks.

A very sombre picture of American crime and punishment.

There’s really nothing to see here, just another synthetic simulation of a film and a genre we used to love, less maintenance required and more complete overhaul.

Minghella doesn’t seem confident in what he’s really trying to make, his film as plainly, ploddingly shot as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy score. If he’s trying to do a knowing carbon copy of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn’t gone far enough into studied pastiche to sell it as such.

Bring tissues for a doozy of an ending that will have everyone bawling in the aisles.

There is no drama or jeopardy or human interest anywhere. This franchise now looks about as urgently contemporary as an in-car CD player.

As a cinema experience, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl at least mirrors the album it celebrates – rote, tinnily light, with the lazy execution and first-draft quality of someone up against a deadline. Further evidence of what critic Spencer Kornhaber has termed Swift’s burnout era.

It’s a powerful, immersively detailed film, with three outstanding performances.

Through it all we see Richard O’Brien himself, sometimes jamming on a guitar and dropping crisp bon mots, right up to the end when he gets just a little bit weepy thinking about it all. Adorable.

Even at a brief 73 minutes, Good Boy can feel stretched, a film that never quite convinces you that a short wouldn’t have worked better. Even though Indy is a remarkably expressive dog, there are only so many variations on dialogue-free scenes of him checking out a weird noise in the dark and the cycle soon gets repetitive, exposing a script that’s a bit on the thin side.