Magic Magic

The first half of Magic Magic is greatly enjoyable: the performances are strong, the photography is crisp and immersive, and the mood is ripe and ominous.

Meticulously acted, gorgeously shot and hilariously insightful about the strange, inarticulable ways people can get on one another's nerves, this psychological thriller takes its premise to surprising, darkly comic extremes ...

It's refreshing to see something with a dramatic heart beating beneath its discomfiting exterior.

It's a big load of much-ado-about-nothing dressed up in writer- director Sebastian Silva's arty movements.

Magic Magic's odd denouement is a dramatic curveball that smacks the viewer square in the face.

A shapeless mess.

Silva, like all good film-makers, is a magician. But thanks to the last-minute fumbling, we're left with a broken spell.

Magic Magic is skewered on the horns of a dilemma, uncertain whether it's a horror film or a psychological drama -- and it doesn't work especially well as either.

Juno Temple is sensational in this assured psychological thriller from Sebastián Silva.

Another satisfyingly nasty and well-controlled work from Silva.

With some haunting imagery and an unusual, throbbing sense of dread throughout, this is a trippy twist on the horror trope about sadists and innocents.

Sebastián Silva's troubling psychological thriller largely eschews cabin-in-the-woods convention, and cements Juno Temple as one of the most compelling young actresses working today.