‘Holly’ Review: Eerie High School Drama Ponders Whether Second Sight is a Gift, a Curse or a Mirage

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic When Holly’s classroom peers call her “the witch,” she meekly shrugs it off. It’s not the least flattering slur with which the shy, soft-spoken 15-year-old has been bullied, and it beats people complaining about how she smells.

It even may, at a certain level, be true. When Holly’s seemingly psychic abilities save her from a fatal disaster at school, her status in the community shifts from outcast to otherworldly icon — as if Carrie White had actually been crowned prom queen, and not bucketed with blood.

Stephen King’s antiheroine comes to mind more than once in Fien Troch’s elusive, intriguing teen drama “Holly,” which plays a little like his story stripped of any outright horror, and only the everyday vanities and failings of humanity in its place.

Still, as a portrait of our collective ability to exploit and destroy any precious resource — human or otherwise, real or imagined — “Holly” proves plenty unnerving anyway, even as Troch’s script slinks around the question of supernatural intervention.