Amulet

She hasn’t just created a stylish potboiler, but a densely textured piece that makes for a truly arresting viewing experience to a point. A shame then that the film succumbs somewhat to the more pretentious and silly aspects of Garai’s initially cryptic puzzle of a script.

It’s an impressive first feature, and while fans of zippy midnight movies might balk at its slow-burn opening act, the film eventually builds to some nutso body horror and a strong sense of mythology that announces Garai’s arrival as a filmmaker to watch, no matter the genre.

It's all way freakier than it is frightening, but there's a distinctive taste for cruelty here that marks Garai as an audacious new horror auteur.

It’s an evocative, confident debut, recalling the metaphorical horror of Jennifer Kent’s "The Babadook" or Babak Anvari’s "Under The Shadow," even as it announces the arrival of a singular new voice.

Amulet is deeply, deliberately mysterious, and all the more fun for it; the less viewers know going in, the more ferocious the ride.

There’s nothing wrong with a slow-burn horror movie, but the key to making that work is to keep things interesting. Amulet fails miserably on that front.

“Amulet” spins its wheels a few too many times, lacking the momentum of something like “Relic,” and I have to admit to feeling a bit cheated by the main twist in the story.