The Strange Ones

However nuanced and artful, the nightmarish unease is laid on so thick that, in combination with the cryptic narrative, it gradually turns to murk.

It's an artful, boundary-pushing debut from Radcliffe and Wolkstein, with breakthrough performances from Freedson-Jackson, and Pettyfer, perhaps signaling a new direction in his career.

Despite the game efforts of its lead actors, this indie road-movie drama goes nowhere - slowly.

The journey there is compelling enough to make it worth the investment.

Secrets curl with thick dread around a man and boy on the run from a dark past in this elliptical and mysterious road movie.

"Ones" isn't much of a puzzle, often too laborious to inspire deep consideration, missing a fundamental screen energy that could help with all the layer-peeling going on.

The Strange Ones is a solid movie on first watch that becomes a seriously good movie on second watch. Maybe that's a poor framework for an endorsement, but the film is more than the shock of its climax.

As The Strange Ones drags and drags it certainly becomes more and more strange, but concurrently interest wanes and wanes

The film's mixture of sensationalism and self-conscious artiness is experimentally disingenuous at best.

Tediously slow, perversely out-of-step with the zeitgeist in the sexual relationship it suggests

Mood prevails over narrative momentum in this elliptical drama that's admirable for its vision even as it keeps its characters at a frustrating emotional distance.

As with all great films, it takes an angle that we may have never thought of before, and one we may not soon forget.