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Rather, a sobering adap of John Boyne’s Holocaust novel, told from a child’s painfully innocent perspective.

Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the son of a Nazi commandant (David Thewlis), who moves his family to Auschwitz. The lad guilelessly befriends the stripy-pyjama-ed Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) – a Polish boy unable to play outside his wire-fenced ‘home’...

Bouncing back from the career low of Hope Springs, Brit writer/director Mark Herman honours the lean punch of Boynes’ deceptively simple prose. Horrors are implied, not exploited; melodrama reined in. There are plausibility issues – no German accents; no guards noticing the kids’ frequent chats – but Herman builds a tightening sense of dread that finds no release in the final, tragic twist. Expect a sleepless night.

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The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.