Critic Reviews

Chained for Life is more than a polemic. There's a free-floating absurdist mood established, humorous and self-referential, allowing space for the audience to not just feel, but think. This is no small feat.

Schimberg confidently blurs the lines between fantasy and reality (more than once a scene that appears to be real is actually fiction and vice versa), though never to the point that it detracts from the people onscreen.

Schimberg’s film is odd, darkly funny and — when it means to be — a little frightening.

More than a film about physically different people, this dryly humorous and ever-perceptive oddball focusses on our relationship toward that difference, and the uplifting moment when cinema ceases to sensationalize it, but lets it act as an engine of creation.

Toying with the audience’s own expectations and predispositions, Schimberg has made a movie that can be confidently called original.

Anchored by Weixler’s and Pearson’s natural charm, Chained for Life stands up as both a quiet ode to the experimental, dreamlike spirit of moviemaking and a seriocomic corrective to sentimentalized sideshow portrayals.

Packed with rambling digressions, sudden shifts of tone, and playful fake-outs as it shuttles between layers of “reality” and performance, but constructed with precision and assurance, it leaves you with both a sugar high and slight sense of nausea.

Poignantly reflecting the intimate connections humans can create in a short space of time, Chained for Life is a rich and rewarding experience.

[A] wonky, charming satire.

Chained for Life invites repeat viewing and “cult film” status, pretty much by design. Whatever writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s other intentions, he’s made a must-see movie for film buffs, one you must-see again just to get all the inside jokes.