Hellions

This creepfest initially serves up some good horror-flick fun, but seems to lose the plot as the wind kicks up and the sky changes colour and the chase goes on and on ...

In its best moments, Hellions is interesting and perplexing and worth soaking in, in the sense that one would admire a Hieronymus Bosch-inspired painting. But without at least one foot on the ground, it doesn't inspire fear.

A perfect, light midnight movie that should go great with light drinks, good company, and a warm blanket.

"Hellions" is art book horror, something to flip through but never truly eerie or scary.

As the terror shifts from suggested to explicit, the eeriness wanes and this supernatural story becomes muddled.

McDonald doesn't want you to have fun, he wants you to be about as uncomfortable as Dora is and, for the most part, he succeeds.

No matter how good these aesthetic tropes are at cultivating fear, however, the content inevitably falls prey to nervous laughter before sadly devolving further into eye-rolls.

It's all fairly preachy nonsense, and never as cerebral as McDonald thinks it is.

The scare factor wears down pretty quickly.

Hellions is a bigger Halloween bust than the house that gives out dental floss to trick 'r treaters.

A half-cocked fusion of Rosemary's Baby and a home invasion flick.