The Babadook (15, 94 mins)

Director: Jennifer Kent

2 stars

How much you enjoy new Australian chiller The Babadook may depend a good deal on what you're looking for from your horror films.

Many fine ingredients are included, and when it focuses its attention on being a particular kind of movie there's much to commend it for.

But it never manages to coalesce into a satisfactory whole and, most damagingly, neither does it provide that most basic of requirements for the genre - scares.

Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single mother struggling to bring up her young son Samuel since her husband died.

He's having bad dreams and is troubled at school, and things aren't helped with the introduction of a scary pop-up book telling the story of The Babadook, a creepy black-cloaked figure likely to be found hiding in wardrobes and under beds.

So when bad things start to happen around Samuel, "the Babadook did it", and for long stretches this is really quite effective, working well as a psychological thriller.

Raising the question of whether the monster is real, or if Amelia is just cracking under the strain of bringing up her difficult son alone, it's as good as any chiller this year.

It has an evocative title, a children's story that comes to life is a great hook, and it follows fairly closely a template set down by The Shining or The Omen.

Restrained and well paced in its build-up, if a little one-note, it deals in potent ideas and taps into oedipal issues and deep fears of parental failure.

Davis is simply outstanding as a woman coming apart at the seams, and young Noah Wiseman is very convincing when Samuel is asked to have a meltdown.

But it's all at the expense of delivering the actual horror goods, and when it comes to the Babadook itself, the film is guilty of wanting its cake and eating it.

This is where it starts to fall apart in the most frustrating ways, resorting to cheap shocks and failing to build a convincing mythology or rules for its bogeyman.

All the strong groundwork is chucked out the window during a risible third act, and good will evaporates.

In a lot of ways, The Babadook should be admired for plotting it own path for a while, but in the end it's just like all the rest.

See it if you liked: The Shining, Dark Water, The Others

Serena (15, 110 mins)

Director: Susanne Bier

3 stars

Filmed early in 2012 but long-delayed, this handsome late-period western is set in North Carolina in 1929, where Bradley Cooper's wealthy industrialist falls for Jennifer Lawrence's eponymous Serena.

Early conflict comes from his logging interest vying with those who want to preserve the area as a national park, but that's merely a precursor to the madness and murder that's to follow.

As a sturdy character drama there's much to sink your teeth into here, but it convinces slightly less as a romance, faltering in execution largely due to an unusually stiff Lawrence.

But the fine period detail and growing sense of unease means it grips and twists when focussing on its betrayals and dark deeds.

See it if you liked: Lawless, The Claim, Winter's Bone

The Book of Life (U, 95 mins)

Director: Jorge R. Gutierrez

2 stars

Mexican feast the Day of the Dead is the focus of this bizarre animation in which Joaquin and Manolo (Channing Tatum and Diego Luna) have been rivals since childhood for the hand of Maria (Zoe Saldana).

The rulers of the two realms of the dead, the upper and under worlds, have a bet to see which of them will get the girl, but it takes an age to get to the main thrust thanks to a wraparound that introduces the story as a tale told to kids visiting a museum.

With characters that don't engage and no end of pointless diversions, this is tough going.

It isn't funny, falling back frequently on toilet humour, and though it has a unique, reasonably interesting wooden design, and the underworlds are nicely realised, it's otherwise a dull, muddled slog that doesn't seem set to appeal to any audience.

See it if you liked: ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Hercules

This Is Where I Leave You (15, 103mins)

Director: Shawn Levy

2 stars

Basically The Judge without the murder, this lumpen tale of family dysfunction stars Jason Bateman who, having recently discovered his wife is cheating on him, returns to the family home when his father dies.

There he finds no end of recriminations as he and his mother (Jane Fonda) and various siblings sit shiva for a week, a structure which forces them to spend days on end with each other and means that the film is never really more than a series of set pieces.

Trying to blend family drama and sentimentality with silly pratfalls and poop jokes for little reward, it's bursting at the seams with familiar elements, and typically overplayed.

By filling it with a tidy roster of stars (Tina Fey, Rose Byrne, Timothy Olyphant), it at least proves distracting for stretches and manages to squeeze out a few hard-earned smiles, mainly thanks to the manic unpredictability of Adam Driver as Bateman's youngest, craziest brother.

For all its flaws, it's not unlikeable, and Driver is so great that it almost, almost comes good in the end.

See it if you liked: August: Osage County, The Judge, Death at a Funeral

Love, Rosie (15, 102 mins)

Director: Christian Ditter

1 star

The umpteenth variation on When Harry Met Sally arrives in the shape of this woeful British romance starring Lily Collins as Rosie, who has been best friends since childhood with Alex (Sam Claflin).

They have plans for college in America, but she ends up pregnant and the years pass with each of them attached to various people but clearly meant for each other.

Smug, clichéd and hard to take remotely seriously, this highly irritating romantic drama drips from one ill-advised incident to the next with no purpose or reason to invest in the leads.

With births, deaths and marriages, everything is thrown at it in a desperate attempt to recreate Four Weddings 20 years down the line, even down to the charmingly stammering Hugh Grant-lite Claflin.

See it if you liked: One Day, What If, Celeste & Jesse Forever

Fury (15, 134 mins)

Director: David Ayer

4 stars

There may never have been a more visceral and unsparing expression of the hell of war than this savage action drama set towards the end of WWII.

As allied forces push their way through German lines, the Fury is a five-man tank with a crew led by Brad Pitt's veteran sergeant and featuring a rogue's gallery of hardened soldiers.

Logan Lerman's inexperienced newcomer is our way into it, and we see the carnage and madness through his increasingly horrified eyes in the dirtiest, bloodiest, least romanticised depiction of the war imaginable, where every German is an enemy, and bodies are just bags of meat.

The majority of the film is a tank battle, but that doesn't mean there isn't also some time for reflection, and shreds of humanity are maintained in surprising ways during a central pause for breath.

Writer-director David Ayer orchestrates the fight sequences with flair if not always total coherence, but always for maximum impact and the result is a stirring, thrilling action movie with enough awareness of, and respect for its setting to never feel exploitative.

See it if you liked: Inglourious Basterds, Saving Private Ryan, War Horse