Sundance is currently holding its final-ever edition in Park City, and it sounds like we now have the first must-see movie out of this year's festival. Josephine, starring Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum, has been hailed as a "special" thriller and it currently holds a perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating.
Written, directed and produced by Beth de Araújo (whose first movie was the excellent Soft & Quiet), Josephine follows an eight-year-old girl (Mason Reeves) who accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park. While her parents (Chan and Tatum) are helpless to console her, she searches for a way to regain control of her safety.
IndieWire has noted that anybody who has seen the thriller at Sundance has been "disturbed, haunted, gripped by the film", so now we just have to wait to see when the movie confirms a release date for the rest of us to see it. For now, we've rounded up the early reviews for Josephine below.
TheWrap
"Josephine is a special, hard-to-stomach yet immaculately handled movie that demands your attention, and is already in contention for best movie of the year."
Screen International
"Josephine flirts with familiar horror tropes involving the possessed or evil child. But this is a far more humane and compassionate story, placing the terror in a painfully real-world situation."
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IndieWire
"[Beth] de Araújo's masterful ability to interrogate tension on every level keeps the film clipping along, each turn both a surprise and an inevitability."
The Daily Beast
"This intensely empathetic film – co-starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan – has a tendency to tip into strident affectation. But thanks to newcomer Reeves, it still lands more than its fair share of punches."
The Playlist
"An audacious, potently unflinching, and profoundly humanistic gut-punch of a film."
Collider
"Josephine is a coming-of-age story in a tragic, uniquely feminine way. While other stories deal with first periods or first kisses, this film touches on a much darker, uglier aspect of girlhood."
Josephine does not yet have a release date.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
