Popular reviews

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  Review by Abby Russell ★½ 4

  I used to enjoy these kinds of movies but now I enjoy having fun.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★

  Somewhere in a fogbound pocket of mid-century Europe, a little girl with curly brown hair shares a dark and dingy apartment with a middle-aged man who makes us nervous. Her name is Mia (Romaine Hemelaers), and her constantly melting teeth are made out of her own frozen saliva. The man’s name is Aalbert Scellinc (Paul Hilton); he is not her father. Neither of them speak. The slatted wooden floors groan like ghosts whenever anyone moves, or when Aalbert tinkers with the headgear he fits around Mia’s face before meals, fresh spit pooling into each of the glass vials positioned on either side of her mouth.

  Aalbert is careful not to touch her, or to let her out of the house…

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  Review by JakubM ★★★★½ 2

  Once again, Lucile Hadžihalilović hits the ground dreaming with ambivalent caretakers and an almost overwhelming number of signifiers. Earwig is, for all its stillness, always in flux, caught between a fairy tale and a horror film, and routinely soaked in otherworldly postwar malaise. Every frame is a stunning collage of greens, ambers, and reds—and don't even get me started on the exterior shots, which make incredible use of texture and pattern. You can almost smell the rain, run your fingers over the wet leaves and mulch.

  Earwig understands bodies as alien vessels, fleshy and obstinate. We open with a lengthy shot of Albert—more specifically, Albert's ear—and follow his daily routine as he cares for a young girl whose teeth are…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½ 1

  I've seen this described as a letdown often when it make last year festival circuit, but it felt to me very much of a piece with Lucile Hadzihalilovic earlier features. Another closed-off sinister system imagined through careful unreal images. The texture is great and Hadzihalilovic remains one of the great lighter of faces on current cinema. So much suggested violence at every shot. It is great bad vibes art horror, sometimes slight too opaque, but very easy to get lost into.

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  Review by Paul Duane ★★★★★

  This is what cinema, as I understand it, is for. Entering a dark room scattered with a few strangers, all of whom are going to spend two hours sharing someone else's dream nightmare, in this case a brownish-black claustrophobic experience suffused with nameless dread, every shadow potentially the source of the feeling you can't really pinpoint, the feeling that this has all happened before, maybe to you, maybe in another life, maybe you were all of the characters in turn, each of their individually bleak fates was yours.
  Things that passed through my brain watching this: what era are we in? post-war Europe? Sure, but what war? Hadzihalilovic sure has a fascination with the mysterious processes of adolescence and how…

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 3

  i’m a big fan of lucile’s spooky little ambiguous movies :)

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  Review by Matt Neglia ★★ 1

  EARWIG tries to hypnotize & transport us into a nightmare through its dark cinematography & chilling atmosphere backed by the haunting score & sound work. However, it never gets us there due to its vague, convoluted & mostly wordless plot. Needed at least 20 minutes shaved off.

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  Review by Chris Evangelista ★★★

  Great to look at, but gosh, even for slow cinema this is pushing it.

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  Review by Alex Kittle ★★★★ 1

  omg such good cat acting!!

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  Review by Helen_S ½ 11

  I seriously envy people who can put a film on, see it's not working for them and switch off. I tried to make a vow to myself years ago to do that if it isn't doing anything for me within 30 minutes and I think I only did it twice and it made me feel some type of way. I'm always like what if it gets better soon and then I'm 40 mins in and am like well I've wasted 40 minutes might as well waste the other hour :( Just watch the gross last 30 seconds because every other second of this film was utter dribble.

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  Review by Brett Arnold ★★½

  The girl with ice teeth from this movie should befriend the boy who eats plastic in CRIMES OF THE FUTURE. Or maybe they should fight. Either way, they should meet.

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★½ 4

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.