30
Hellions is unsettling, but in all the wrong ways.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
25
Completely forgettable, Hellions is far less cool, smart, and scary than it thinks it is.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Rather than engage in slow-build horror, Pascal Trottier's screenplay flips the switch into Poultergeisty chaos.
42
Plenty of striking, clever, effective movies have been made simply by re-arranging and re-calibrating familiar genre elements. Hellions might have been one of these, if it was predicated on something slightly less shallow than “kids in masks + chanting + blood = scary.”
40
The New York Times by Ken Jaworowski
A jumbled third act and an indifferent ending ultimately make Hellions disappointing. But there’s a bit of fun to be had in its opening frights, and in trying to figure out what these costumed little monsters really want.
40
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Hellions is art book horror, something to flip through but never truly eerie or scary.
30
Bruce McDonald’s Hellions is an unpleasant muddle of the visceral and the abstract.
63
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
There is, in other words, nothing new in Hellions that you can't get already in earlier, more ambitious horror films. But McDonald delivers an effective thrice-told tale, and he does it with enough avant garde flair to show viewers that temper their expectations a good time.