Pete’s Dragon (PG) Cineworld Poole, Odeon, ABC ***

DO you believe in dragons? 

You certainly will by the conclusion of David Lowery’s charming fantasy adventure, which reworks the beloved 1977 Disney musical of the same title as a rip-roaring story of devotion between an orphaned boy and his mythical protector.

State-of-the-art special effects magically bring to life the titular behemoth - a gargantuan fluffy green beast, whose inquisitive and playful demeanour suggests it might be the love child of Sulley from Monsters, Inc and Falkor the luckdragon in The Neverending Story.

Lowery’s film possesses a similar sense of wonder as those two family favourites, underscored with life lessons about the self-sacrifice that springs naturally from an enduring friendship.

The lean script, co-written by the director and Toby Halbrooks, is punctuated with thrilling action sequences and doesn’t saturate the screen with mawkish sentimentality.

Pete’s Dragon casts a heady spell by combining solid, old-fashioned storytelling with dazzling visuals.

Do you believe in dragons? I do.

Nerve (15) Cineworld Poole, Odeon **

IN an age of grubby reality TV and 24-hour social chatter, the premise of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s voyeuristic high-stakes thriller doesn’t seem particularly far-fetched.

Based on Jeanne Ryan’s young adult novel, Nerve imagines an online game of truth or dare - minus the truth - which challenges daredevil participants to accept challenges proposed by the thousands of people who “watch” on tablets and smartphones.

These tasks vary from the simple (flashing your bottom in public) to the frankly suicidal (dangling one-handed from a construction crane for five seconds).

If fame-hungry players complete a dare within the allocated time, they are rewarded with increasing cash sums and move onto the next test, accruing followers in the process.

Failure to complete a task results in players being eliminated from the game, presuming they physically survive the ordeal.

Directors Joost and Schulman are a snug fit for the hi-tech material.

They rose to prominence in 2010 with the documentary Catfish about bogus Facebook profiles and employ a mosaic of text conversations, video screens and on-screen usernames to capture real-time suspense as players intersect and gleefully sabotage each other to ensure safe passage to the final.

Nerve exploits the insecurity of a generation that believes self-worth hinges on strangers clicking a Like button.

The Shallows (15) Cineworld Poole, Odeon ***

JUST when you thought it was safe to head back into the water, Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra shreds nerves and nubile flesh using one of cinema’s most ferocious and enduring villains: the great white shark.

The Shallows thrashes about in the wake of Jaws and its B-movie imitators, heightening tension by focusing on the efforts of one character to evade a voracious fish that has been drawn into a beautiful Mexican bay.

This less-is-more approach adopted by screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski delivers plentiful edge-of-seat scares and affords the film some unexpected humour as the stricken heroine befriends an injured bird, which she christens Steven Seagull.

Prepare to be glistening with sweat by the end credits with this restrained horror.