66
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The Hollywood ReporterRay BennettThe Hollywood ReporterRay BennettThe film is about vanity and pride, and the caging of beauty. Its elaborate fabrication has an intoxicating quality that captures the imagination like all good horror stories.
- 80The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisFlaunting elements of "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Island of Lost Souls," the movie, with its haunting, claustrophobic environment, allows the living and the merely lifelike to interact with an eerie beauty.
- 75New York PostV.A. MusettoNew York PostV.A. MusettoMainstream audiences will be put off by the lack of a straightforward narrative, but adventurous moviegoers will find pleasure in the hypnotic originality of the images.
- 75TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghSeething with suggestions of perverse pleasures and inchoate horror, this dark fairy tale won't win the Pennsylvania-born, London-based Quay brothers any new fans -- it plays to the converted, and the converted know who they are.
- 70VarietyVarietyImpresses as a visually exquisite, rigorously intellectual but dauntingly obscurantist fable about automatons, opera singers and herniated desire that will appeal exclusively to arthouse auds with rarefied tastes.
- 70Village VoiceVillage VoiceThe story--is only important in that it gives the Quays a foundation for their fabulous animated tableaux.
- 50The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasPerhaps the film will connect with those attuned to the Quays' allusive wavelength, much as a dog responds to a whistle. Others won't hear a thing.
- 50New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanWith the film's hypnotic emphasis on artistry and architecture, most viewers will probably get their satisfaction from the striking visual elements, particularly the stop-motion animation.
- 50L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyOnce the Quay brothers confidently establish their film's astonishing look, they merely repeat their techniques until the images no longer delight or surprise, leaving all too visible the Quays' struggles with the trickier demands of storytelling and character development.
- 40Film ThreatPhil HallFilm ThreatPhil HallBy the end of the 99 minute running time, there is a terrible sense of been-there/done-that. And for artists of the Quays' caliber, that is a huge mistake.