Review

Mark Herman’s blunt, thuddingly contrived Holocaust drama features Vera Farmiga as a willfully clueless Nazi wife, David Thewlis as a Nazi commander, and—in a twist that makes Life Is Beautiful seem like Chekhov—Asa Butterfield as their naïve son who befriends a kid in his father’s concentration camp and passes snacks through the electrified fence. The switcheroo finale is jaw-droppingly ludicrous. — Logan Hill