Camille Meadows (Suki Waterhouse) arrives at Edelvine Academy for Girls as a new student after the mysterious suicide of an Edelvine student, Kerrie (Megan Best). She had jumped out of a window when Alice (Inanna Sarkis) and her friends, Yvonne (Stephanie Sy), Lenora (Jade Michael), Bethany (Madisen Beaty), and Rosalind (Djouliet Amara), performed a seance to conjure the ghost of another student who also committed suicide. A fight with Alice leads to both Camille and Alice getting into trouble with the headmistress, Mrs. Landry (Marina Stephenson) and getting assigned detention. They perform seances together as their friends die one by one.

      Part ghost story, part slasher/murder mystery, Seance neither has enough scares to be an effective horror film nor the suspense needed to make an an effective thriller. The screenplay by writer/director Simon Barrett has a solid first act before taking a nosedive during the uneven second act that becomes increasingly tedious. Is the culprit behind the deaths on-screen human or supernatural? What might be their motive? Does it have anything to do with the seances? The answers to those questions become increasingly easy to predict as the film progresses, but the lazy screenplay doesn't really help you to care about what the answers are.  

       To be fair, Seance is as not lethargic as the Suspiria remake from a few years ago, but it comes close. It lacks the stylish cinematography which Suspiria had to engage audiences on a palpable level. Both films save their blood-and-guts scene until the end, although there's not much here that pushes the envelope or disgusts the audience like in Suspiria. The characters, which there are too many of, come across more as caricatures than as human beings which means that it's hard to be emotionally invested in their relationships or to even care about who will die next. Mrs. Landry has a son, Trevor (Seamus Patterson), but he too remains forgettable as a character. There's no psychological horror to be found here which would be fine if there was something else to hold one's interest, i.e. campiness or dark comedy like in You're Next written by Simon Barrett. Seance takes itself too seriously even during its over-the-top, twisted third act that would've been surprising if it made any sense in hindsight or if you cared about any of the characters to begin with. On a positive note, Seance's running time is about 90 minutes, so it's torture to sit through it.
 

      Nine-year-old Anna Kemper (Riva Krymalowski) lives in Berlin with her mother, Dorothea (Carla Juri), father, Arthur (Oliver Masucci), and older brother, Max (Marinus Hohmanm). When Adolph Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany in 1933, Arthur, a theater critic who bravely criticizes Hitler in his writings, flees to Prague before meeting Anna, Max and Dorothea in Zurich to start a new life there and protect his family from the Nazis. Anna can only bring one of her stuffed animals with her, so she leaves behind her beloved pink rabbit which the family's housekeeper, Heimpi (Ursula Werner), promises to return to her in the future. Anna's uncle, Julius (Justus von Dohnányi), a zookeeper, stays in Berlin and keeps in touch with Anna through postcards even when she and her family move from Zurich to Paris.

       Based on the memoir by Judith Kerr, the screenplay by writer/director Caroline Link and co-writer Anna Brüggemann tells the WWII story through the perspective of Anna. To be fair, the task to condense a novel to 2 hour movie and to make it cinematic is no easy task. The same can be said about the challenge of getting inside a character's head because, with a book, it's easier to achieve that feat. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit does a decent job of getting inside Anna's head, but it's hard to be fully absorbed by the story because not enough time is spent focusing on her life in Berlin, Zurich and Paris. The film seems at times like it's in a hurry to move the plot forward rather than to take its time to allow the audience to get to know the characters. You don't get to see how Anna's uncle, Julius, suffers in Berlin, although you briefly hear about some of his struggles later on.

      The filmmakers could have easily escalated the dramatic tension because the Kemper family's life always remains in danger as they flee the Nazis, but instead of turning the film into an edge-of-year-seat thriller, it's more of a drama with a few intense moments. Despite his presence in the title, Hitler isn't even shown on-screen. By keeping the horrors of the Holocaust off-screen, Link and Brüggemann leave it to the audience's imagination which makes as horrifying for those who already know about the Holocaust. For children, though, nothing like the brutal and harrowing The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas; it's more along the lines of A Bag of Marbles which is also a family-friendly depiction of events that took place during the Holocaust.

      In terms of production values, the set and costume designs look authentic to the time period which adds to the film's authenticity. There's also some breathtaking, bright and colorful scenery that serves as a contrast to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Anna's stuffed pink rabbit that she leaves behind can be seen as a metaphor for the loss of her childhood innocence or her longing for childhood innocence. Fortunately, the film doesn't go too heavihanded with that metaphor while trusting the audience's intelligence to decide for themselves what the stuffed animal means beneath the surface. Riva Krymalowski is very well cast as Anna and gives a heartfelt performance that brings plenty of depth to the role. The depth of emotion in this film comes, ultimately, from the performances more than the screenplay. At a running time of just under 2 hours, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, is a tender, gentle and often engrossing story that leaves the true horrors of the Holocaust to the imagination of the audience.