Critic Reviews

Eiichi Yamamoto's cult anime strikes a perfect balance between midnight-movie enchantment and arthouse sophistication.

Perhaps too ambitious for its own good (or at least its budget), the film is impossible to dismiss, even if it exhausts its reserve of ideas.

There's an undeniable genius at work here, strong enough to survive the psychedelic sleaze that's been baked into every frame.

Belladonna of Sadness is compulsively watchable, even at its most disturbing: The imagery is frequently graphic, and still, after over 40 years, it has the power to shock.

The artwork is achingly delicate, but there's nothing subtle about Belladonna of Sadness, a blast of psychedelic madness full of rape, tyranny and Satanism.

For those up for an adventure into the LSD-influenced world of counterculture animation, Belladonna of Sadness is a curious artifact that, after 43 years, remains a glorious mindf--k.

For all its overindulgence in depravity, Belladonna stands as both an important forebear to a now-beloved genre and a confused, albeit earnest tribute to those who dare defy authority in order to elevate themselves.

A virgin, defiled. A pact with the devil, consummated. Erotomania, running wild. It’s Belladonna of Sadness, and in it there will be blood. And watercolors.

That mashup — of feminine beauty and insanity-inducing toxicity —is a good cipher for everything about Belladonna of Sadness (“Kanashimi no Balladonna”).

You can fully enjoy Belladonna of Sadness if you either overlook or participate in the objectification of a gorgeous victim.