Beatrice Loayza

We know from innumerable slashers that when a character is alone, trouble is around the corner. But “Leviticus,” with its gloomy, isolated setting and dogmatic parents, manages to turn this vulnerability into an existential issue, too. To make matters worse, the only glimmers of human warmth our boys receive are from each other — and that opens yet another can of worms.

These delicate mood-shifts are the film’s strength, sanding over (to an extent) the clunkiness of its themes to achieve a special balance: Honeyjoon is both a mourning movie, and a horny one.

Like an acoustic ballad — say, Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up” that receives an auspicious needle drop — Carolina Caroline doesn’t seem all that remarkable until you hush and take in the lyrics. Suddenly, you’re swept up in big feelings.

Ambiguity is key to this style of horror, where space and atmosphere do most of the heavy lifting, and though the story isn’t over-explained, mind you, it’s filled out enough to break its own uncanny spell.

The overlap of the two households, which offers an exciting narrative possibility, peters out with predictable cynicisms, while the climax is borderline comedic in its forced symbolism about family bonds.

In theory, the British director’s fifth feature — premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes — is a film of big, bubbling emotions and anti-capitalist rage. In execution, it’s a choppy outline of five working-class lives in the U.K. cobbled together by gloopy sentimentality.

The supernatural elements — angry ghosts and sunken places — feel like forced metaphors next to Hana’s real-life horrors, and, worse, they diminish the film’s compelling specificity.

Plenty of things happen, but Silent Friend isn’t traditionally plot-driven. It’s a film of sprawling ideas that float around like pollen, with some particles creating marvelous blooms. Others drift off aimlessly.

Intentionally juvenile humor can have a way of breaking down even the stoniest viewer with the right levels of sincerity and self-awareness, but the film (a remake of the Norwegian thriller “The Trip”) is too slick and giddy about its own crudity to nurture these elements.

To Akin’s credit, the film isn’t tastelessly sentimental (see “Jojo Rabbit”), and it depicts Nanning’s awakening with the kind of subtlety and restraint that suggests his moral education will continue evolving after the end of the movie.