‘While a number of elements give audience members something to appreciate, the ultimate sum of the film’s parts leaves much to be desired. Krawchuk has failed to make his character make the jump from film short to full-length feature, and the Jester, while cool, remains decidedly underdeveloped. The script is tired territory, offering a simplistic, pantomime depiction of emotional trauma, depression, and family relations that neither offers a new angle or does a particularly effective job of presenting familiar ones.’

‘This was a genius idea from conception and it came together at the right time. Animatronic toys were creepy as hell before anyone put a serial killer’s soul inside, and there are few things more quintessentially 80s than watching a struggling single mother sacrifice her financial and bodily security in order to chase the materialistic flotsam of the popular culture by buying a toy doll from a homeless man in an alley.’

‘Pearl is a superior film to its predecessor, telling a bloody but heartfelt story of a young woman who struggled to find her place in the world and bear the starkness of the hand that life dealt. Despite her faults, her outbursts, her patent instability, I felt a tremendous level of sympathy for the title character, and find her only real sin is that of ambition and human need which by its very appetite demanded more than what a North Texas farmer’s life could provide.’