Murder, masturbation, melancholy, molly-this is one overstuffed Canadian debut feature. Perhaps they should have cut the talking hamster.

| Sep 28, 2017

One way to tell a promising director is by the acting in his or her film, and the performances in "Closet Monster" are solid all the way around, no matter how small the role.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2016

If it all doesn't work perfectly, that's oddly okay, the character-driven highs making up for the bits and pieces that fail to reach the same sort of unpredictably enthralling heights so much of the rest thankfully soars to.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2016

Sort of a horror film, but not really. It's too funny to be categorized that way.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 24, 2016

A film school thesis project that somehow found its way into general release.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 13, 2016

Dunn plays around with perspective and style, but all the flash doesn't obscure the film's emotion and heart, which are deep and true.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 29, 2016

It's nothing less than an emotional exorcism.

| Sep 29, 2016

Closet Monster is most successful when it uses fable-like qualities to allow us to feel Oscar's emotions viscerally rather than narratively.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 23, 2016

A most auspicious debut.

| Sep 23, 2016

Connor Jessup wonderfully inhabits the teenage Oscar, who observes others while trying to find himself. Aaron Abrams, as his father, and Aliocha Schneider and Sofia Banzhaf, as friends, are just as multilayered.

| Sep 22, 2016

It wouldn't work at all if the filmmaker hadn't lucked into an actor as gifted as Jessup.

| Sep 21, 2016

It's when Stephen Dunn dares to inhabit the how and not the what of queerness that the film feels authentic and deliciously strange.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 20, 2016

If there is any doubt that this country's young filmmakers need all the institutional support they can get, then Closet Monster offers the definitive answer: God, yes, please!

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 15, 2016

Newfoundland filmmaker Stephen Dunn employs fantasy and bizarre flourishes in his imaginative debut drama about a teen's (Blackbird's Connor Jessup) conflicts about his sexuality.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 14, 2016