Critic Reviews

Movies like “Earwig” defy criticism or even explanation. ... Lucile Hadžihalilović took a risk by making a movie this peculiar; it feels like the least we can do is take a risk by watching it.

In a just world, Hadžihalilović would be as acclaimed as somebody like Tim Burton, whose greatest films boast a spiritual connection of sorts to the French director.

It hardly needs to be said that the film will not be for everyone. But even those frustrated by the knotted plotting will admit that Hadžihalilović masters the crucial trick of presenting the narrative as if it makes sense to itself.

Earwig consciously lacks the clarity we’re taught to ultimately expect from mysteries – but then Hadžihalilović is not in the business of making clear-cut whodunits. In opting to take a less-trodden path, she creates something sensuously distinct but narratively ambivalent.

When it’s not falling into the traps of prestige horror with arbitrary vagueness, Earwig has power to pull viewers into its strange, menacing universe—enough to make this experience worthwhile.

The result is an impressionistic film that flirts with slow cinema on its way towards something more incantatory; a film that doesn’t want to lull you to sleep so much as it wants to lure you into a place so dark and dreamy that you can no longer be certain that you’re still awake.

Hadžihalilović's latest is both too hazy to make a great adaptation and too focused to be genuinely dream-like.

Viewers looking for explanations should probably stay away, but those willing to be carried by the film’s casual pace and haunting aesthetic will find there are few places like it in contemporary cinema.

A fog of menace descends on this hauntingly photographed, oppressive and driftingly directionless movie from Lucile Hadzihalilovic. It has the intensively curated atmosphere of body-horror noir – if not the conventional plot structure – and some way into the running time you might find yourself awakened from its reverie of formless anxiety by a sudden, horrifying stab of violence.

Earwig, the director’s first English-language film, lacks the macabre logic of Evolution, or the precision of Innocence; the audience is left fumbling for meaning in the gloom.