Rob Humanick

Terry Masear’s experience as a victim of childhood abuse is succinctly and broadly addressed, underscoring a largely unspoken meta-narrative about the necessity of compassion and forgiveness.

Pablo Berger's film effortlessly brings a sense of universality to its story.

It’s disappointing that so much of the film feels like mere tilling of the soil.

Despite the subdued anger and drawn-out suffering on display, the documentary is primarily a work of hope.

A knowing mélange of recognizable genre tropes bordering on shopworn cliché, with little else introduced to the equation to justify its existence.

The film is spare, empathic, and deeply introspective, and its imagery, such as a pelican fascinated by its own reflection, is so sublime in its kookiness as to be worthy of Werner Herzog.

By modestly embracing its inherent minimalism and finding the emotions underlying even the most schematic of scenarios, the film taps into something unmistakably human.

By formally acknowledging the material's inherent silliness ad nauseam, the filmmakers have distanced themselves from the spirit of the parody, robbing it of its gruesome pleasures.

The film is at once enabled and hindered by its utter strangeness, an intrinsic quality surely exacerbated in its English-language release.

The doc does a good job of avoiding partisan caterwauling, limiting its argument to a clear thesis and well-articulated supporting statements.