I can’t wait to see – and hear – what [Hadaway] does next.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 4, 2022

A hard hitting look inside the body and mind of a compulsive perfectionist.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2022

Hadaway delivers an engaging queer psychological thriller which delves deep into the destructive nature of obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 31, 2022

It’s hard to deny Fuhrman’s pinch-faced vehemence and the film’s hallucinatory verve.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 29, 2022

Lauren Hadaway's The Novice is a powerful look at compulsion.

| Dec 18, 2021

The feature filmmaking debut from writer/director/co-editor Lauren Hadaway is an intimate and powerful sensory experience all around.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 17, 2021

The lesson is plain: If you don't slow down and chill out, you might turn out like this gal.

| Original Score: B | Dec 17, 2021

The movie captures what it looks like when the hunger to win blots out life.

| Dec 17, 2021

a startling, singular and masterful debut, introducing a daring filmmaker possessed of an unequivocal mastery of her craft and most important, something to say with it.

| Dec 17, 2021

At no point does Hadaway glamorize the amount of work and sacrifice necessary to excel in the sport; what she shows instead is the gargantuan effort it takes to scratch out even a modicum of success.

| Dec 16, 2021

If the story's hero can only aspire to the middle of the pack, the beginner behind the camera shows no such limitations.

| Dec 16, 2021

It's hard to take and utterly unforgettable.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 15, 2021

For all of the stylistic verve that Lauren Hadaway brings to this tale of compulsive self-improvement, the film's protagonist remains a cipher.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 14, 2021

Lauren Hadaway has made a sports movie, a queer romance, a thriller, and, ultimately, a character study.

| Nov 17, 2021

A film this raw made with such a steady, assured hand only comes along once in a while. We should take notice.

| Jul 7, 2021

Isabelle Fuhrman boldly pushes her troubled character to greater and greater extremes, daring the audience to recoil at the lengths this young woman will go to reach her dream.

| Jun 28, 2021

The film's tense score, from composer Alex Weston, adds to the sense that "The Novice" is more a horror film than anything else, with a series of intriguing, vintage song choices alternately cutting and upping that tension.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 15, 2021