Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A small film that packs a horribly big punch.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Shot in chilly shades of blue, "The Babadook" will haunt anyone who's ever heard a cry in the night - or wondered what was under the bed, in the dark.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Manages to deliver real, seat-grabbing jolts while also touching on more serious themes of loss, grief and other demons that can not be so easily vanquished.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
In an age when horror movies have mostly become lazy and toothless, here's one with ambition and bite.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Director Kent has made the kind of striking film that is going to have mainstream Hollywood haunting her like a Babadook in a bad mood. For the sake of her idiosyncratic vision, let's hope she doesn't frighten easily.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Although the supernatural seems the likeliest answer, it's not the only one, and audiences can read the film either way.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
One of the smartest and most effective horror films in years.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
This is a really scary movie.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
You will be scared. And also, perhaps even more scarily, moved.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The Babadook" is urgent, uncanny and entirely disturbing, a dream within a dream within a nightmare. It is the best English language supernatural film of this new century.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Kent has taste, an eye and a knack for brisk, accelerated pacing. In the case of "The Babadook," familiarity breeds an eerily gratifying contentment.

Name : William Goss / Alias : Film.com
An impressively chilling exercise in old-school restraint.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
The Babadook makes the most of its special effects as needed, but this smart little frightener keeps its head close to the rising anxiety of a young widow whose husband died a violent death.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
With its mixture of frights both literal and literary, "The Babadook" will, I suspect, satisfy horror's devotees as much as the genre's doubters.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
This is a different kind of nail-biter that has less to do with demonic possession than with the renegade power of an untamed imagination.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
Who thinks up a film like The Babadook? Actress-turned-debuting-feature-director Jennifer Kent has the narrative chutzpah to show her entire hand in the pop-up story and then make us squirm as foretold events come true.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
What really distinguishes The Babadook, however, is the metaphorical potency of its narrative.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"An exceptionally rich psychological portrait of a woman, it's an enormously compassionate and sadly relevant film about misplaced blame and the often impossible demands of motherhood."

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This psychological thriller from gifted first-time filmmaker Jennifer Kent will have you climbing the walls simply by plumbing the violence of the mind. Brace yourself.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
No matter how successful The Babadook turns out to be - and Jennifer Kent's horror story deserves all the success it gets - the prospects of a best-selling kid-lit tie-in don't look good.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"The Babadook" is a smart, darkly drawn modern-day horror movie of monsters, memories and mothers.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
It's the most horror I've felt at a horror film since Neil Marshall's The Descent, one where the scares don't release the tension - they harrow.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
In the running with Boyhood as my favorite movie of 2014 is another work that turns on the challenges of parenting. This one is a tad more insane.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Let a law be passed, requiring all horror films to be made by female directors.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Credit writer-director Jennifer Kent for lending her Australian indie a healthy dose of brains and subtlety, giving it a distinct advantage over most modern horror films.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Jennifer Kent's startling debut is an artful horror-chiller that gets under your skin and into your psyche.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
A potent journey through the fears, anxieties, and repressed rages of motherhood.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
As someone who has developed a pretty thick Critic's Shield from years of watching standard haunted house/possessed human/mythological-creature fare, I have to say I was genuinely freaked out by some of the passages in The Badabook.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
I like to imagine watching this chilling Australian horror film with late, great authors Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey - all of whom would have relished its twisted children's storybook at the center of things.

Name : Drew Hunt / Alias : Chicago Reader
The Babadook makes a convincing argument for classy, psychological horror cinema even as it fails to meet its own lofty standard.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The Babadook makes everyday domestic life seem like the most natural possible place to encounter monsters of every description, including the monsters that we ourselves have the capacity to become.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Sometimes you go to a movie and know from the first image that whoever made it knows what she's doing. You don't need convincing. You're there with her. Jennifer Kent's The Babadook is like that.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
This is a dark and shivery story about motherhood, a common subject for horror movies, but one that's rarely treated with such intelligence or seriousness of intent.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
McCarthy's trademark blend of chipper likability and treble-voiced rage just isn't quite enough to carry things through.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A few moments are fantastically bonkers, but granting director duties to McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone, feels more like an act of love than wisdom.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"The Boss" never feels like more than a series of bawdy, R-rated sketches held together by bubble gum and masking tape.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
As in McCarthy's slipshod road movies Identity Thief and Tammy, the material here isn't on her level, the laughs are largely cheap and once again, the hall-of-fame comic actress is stuck in a minor-league movie.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
I persist in believing that Melissa McCarthy is capable of starring in a movie that not only makes a scads of money but is - you know - good. The latest refutation of my belief is The Boss.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Dinklage is awful as the foppish villain, and aside from one uproarious, ad-libbed riff, McCarthy seems to be on autopilot.

Name : Joe Dziemianowicz / Alias : New York Daily News
"The Boss" doesn't work.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A lot of The Boss works because Michelle Darnell is a funny character, and McCarthy is funny playing her.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
By making McCarthy the center of every scene without giving her an actual character to play, Falcone and McCarthy require her to carry more weight that anyone possibly could.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
It's just early April, but I have an early contender for the most loathsome, ill-advised, horrible executed, most spectacularly unfunny movie scene of the year.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
The Boss gives its star few, if any, hitting partners. It's a baffling decision .

Name : Dan Callahan / Alias : TheWrap
It isn't comedy, and it isn't drama, much less comedy-drama.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
McCarthy shines when loosely riffing, but the plot tightens around her like a vise.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
McCarthy remains one of the funniest actors alive - a truth that frequently rescues, but doesn't really redeem, this sloppy comedy .

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Did you ever think only male comics could obsess over infantile boob, crotch and sex jokes? The Boss will set you straight on that delusion, too.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie is all too neat a package for McCarthy's exuberantly inventive comic artistry.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
There are brief bursts of hilarity, and they are all, without exception, owed to McCarthy's innate charisma and comedic timing.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
World-class gumption and an on-camera look that the pretty committee would applaud can't save a poorly executed comedy whose essential elements are dirty words and falling down.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Although her charisma is still undeniable, there's also no denying that McCarthy is capable of much more than she's allowing herself to do here. There comes a point when every force of nature starts to look just plain forced.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
McCarthy is a national slapstick treasure, but The Boss is a weak-kneed comedy that would topple without her.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
McCarthy deserves better than this. She can aim higher.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A hit-and-miss comedy, but McCarthy leads a game cast through several memorable moments.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
Well, they can't all be Bridesmaids.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"The Boss'' provides the talented Melissa McCarthy plenty of scenery to comically chew on - she is very funny at times - but the story is paper-thin, and the script gives much of the supporting cast the proverbial pink slip.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The loosey-goosey fun might be a bit much at the finish, but it's still a laugh watching McCarthy try to get back on her feet.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
McCarthy is such a comedic powerhouse that she can play Michelle with incredible physicality and slapstick while also imbuing the character with wit, cunning, and even ruthlessness.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"The Boss" has zero finesse as a comedy. When Darnell crashes into a wall, or takes a tumble down the stairs, it's alarming and painful, as opposed to funny.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It is hard to think of a movie squandering the opportunity of a perfectly timed cultural moment quite like "The Boss."

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Nothing in the storyline, direction or character types is remotely fresh.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Sometimes it's pleasurable enough just watching the most unlikely American comedy star since Bill Murray slip into a groove.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
McCarthy is great - foul-mouthed, funny and fierce. And for those of us who suffered painfully (yet hopefully) through things like "Identity Thief," the movie feels like a healthy step forward.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The Boss feels like an elongated sketch.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A free-for-all of inappropriate language unsuitable for even the most crass boy's-club boardroom, The Boss can't quite decide if warming the heart or obliterating it with insults is the end goal.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Even though The Boss is co-written by McCarthy and her husband, director Ben Falcone (who should know his wife's strengths better), the film often strands its title character in shrill one-note caricature, mostly unchallenged.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
This is a lazy Melissa McCarthy vehicle that relies on relentless potty-mouth moments - it's so funny when otherwise decorous characters continually do the vulgar! - and the pratfall comedy of McCarthy.

Name : Mara Reinstein / Alias : Us Weekly
The gifted Melissa McCarthy has spent the bulk of her post-Bridesmaids career elevating so-so material. Add this raunchy comedy to the pile of mediocrity.