Another contender in the race for the Academy Award for Best Picture is the hard hitting and controversial film Spotlight. Oscar bait movies tend to be a tad more challenging, thought provoking or shocking than the average release. Spotlight goes right for the jugular, telling the story of the journalists at the Boston Globe who exposed the massive cover-up of child molestation in the Catholic Church – subject matter not for the faint hearted, but a truly powerful and engaging film with a plot that needed to be told.

When Marty Baron (Liev Shreiber) takes over, as Editor at the Boston Globe his first act is to examine a story seemingly buried over decades. He enlists his investigative team ‘Spotlight’ to look into the many unresolved or ignored cases and reports of priests performing sex acts on children and getting away with it. The Spotlight team, headed by Walter ‘Robbie’ Robinson (Michael Keaton) agree to look into it further.

What they uncover is the biggest news story of the modern era, that is until; September 11 2001 terrorist attacks occur and the newsroom erupts into shambles. What remains is the four committed journalists of Spotlight who continue to probe and analyse their evidence of wrongdoing in the church and hope to expose a cabal extending back to the 1960’s and stretching beyond Boston, or even the United States for that matter.

Director Tom McCarthy commands a heavy movie; the tone is morose and dark and is that way the whole way through. It displays the hard work of the Spotlight team (Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian D’Arcy James) the long-standing voices of those trying to expose the conspiracy and the bravery of the victims and survivors who came forward. As the plot thickens and details unravel the characters learn what we know all too well in 2016; this was a systemic issue stemming all the way back to the Vatican.

It’s not easy to make a film that directly criticises one of the most practiced faith of the Western World, but sometimes the truth hurts. Film is about telling lots of different stories and it is important to tell the true stories to inform the public as well as entertain. Spotlight is not for the faint of heart and it will leave you feeling hollow when the credits roll; either from emotional exhaustion or from stilted rage questing why this happened in the first place. However, Spotlight is essential viewing and a hot contender amongst many stellar films this Oscar season.