Film review: Belfast
Kenneth Branagh’s touching film about a boy’s life in the Troubles in Northern Ireland
The actress Romola Garai’s directorial debut is a “moody, brooding” horror film that inches from “slow-boil creaks to rapturous, hallucinogenic madness”, while delivering a few good jump scares along the way, said Mark Kermode in The Observer; “an encounter with something horrible in the bathroom gave me a genuine start”. The Romanian actor Alec Secareanu stars as Tomaz, a veteran “from an unnamed, conflict-torn country”, now making ends meet in squalid London. When he meets a “sinisterly smiling nun”, Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton), she offers him refuge in a dilapidated suburban house, where he can live as long as he helps to repair the building. He accepts, and ends up enclosed in the house with Magda (Carla Juri), a fellow resident who’s taking care of her disabled mother. Gradually, the house becomes “a character with its own distinctive pulse”, whose “mouldy walls mirror a creeping moral malaise within”.
The first hour of Amulet is admirably chilling, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. But “as the bumps in the attic grow progressively more alarming”, Garai gets into a “terrible tangle” with an overcomplicated plot “involving demons, deities and eternal damnation”. I found this “chamber-horror oddity” weird and wonky, agreed Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Amulet could have brought a “bracingly ambitious” feminist twist to the genre. Yet the pacing is “askew” and the dialogue stilted – and the “berserk” ending unleashes a series of twists that upend “all the power dynamics we’d previously been fed”. You’ll leave confused, which is hardly ideal.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
5 high-caliber cartoons about Kristi Noem shooting her puppy
Cartoons Artists take on the rainbow bridge, a farm upstate, and more
By The Week US Published
-
The Week Unwrapped: Why is the world running low on blood?
Podcast Scientists believe universal donor blood is within reach – plus, the row over an immersive D-Day simulation, and an Ozempic faux pas
By The Week Staff Published
-
Rishi Sunak's asylum spat with Ireland explained
In Depth Irish government plans to override court ruling that the UK is unsafe for asylum seekers
By The Week UK Published
-
Properties of the week: houses with enchanting gardens
The Week Recommends Featuring pretty homes in Hampshire, Devon and West Sussex
By The Week UK Published
-
Venice Biennale 2024: from the good to the bad to the downright 'bizarre'
The Week Recommends Central exhibition features the work of some 330 artists
By The Week UK Published
-
Sunset Song: gripping theatre that's 'close to magic'
The Week Recommends Morna Young's 'first-class adaptation' of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel
By The Week UK Published
-
Challengers: 'the most purely pleasurable film of the year so far'
The Week Recommends Zendaya plays a former tennis player turned coach in this 'almost ridiculously' sexy drama
By The Week UK Published
-
Baby Reindeer: a 'compelling and unforgettable' series
The Week Recommends Comedian Richard Gadd's disturbing Netflix drama about stalking
By The Week UK Published
-
Daniel Wallace's 5 favorite books that should not be forgotten
Feature The author recommends works by Italo Calvino, Evan S. Connell, and more
By The Week US Published
-
6 picturesque homes in Arizona
Feature Featuring a glass elevator in Sedona and a grotto waterfall in Paradise Valley
By The Week Staff Published
-
Silversea cruise review: a Central and North American adventure
The Week Recommends An incredible journey featuring cultural exploration, cooking classes, comfort and more
By Yasemen Kaner-White Published