THE DEMONS (LES DÉMONS) World Cinema

Growing up in suburban Montreal in the late 1980s, 10-year-old Félix is surrounded by a seemingly loving and stable family, and should be living a carefree existence. But the mysterious grown-up world around him comes into vivid focus when an intense marital fight erupts between his parents, and he starts to overhear stories about missing children in nearby towns. Félix, internalizing these disturbing changes, begins to do things he doesn’t yet understand — with scary consequences. From the opening scene, which shows young bodies at a dance set to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, documentary filmmaker Philippe Lesage (in his narrative feature debut) shows a startling ability to create dread and anxiety in the most domestic of situations. With elegant cinematography and music, and a performance of surprising sensitivity and nuance by young Édouard Tremblay-Grenier, THE DEMONS shows the terrors — real and imagined — of growing up. — Sudeep Sharma