Critic Reviews

Lllosa’s sensually shot film takes the story of a mother facing strange danger and casts a spell that feels like being dropped into the character’s mind.

In the wonderfully weird and atmospheric Fever Dream, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (The Milk of Sorrow) explores a mother’s guilt and fear in a fable of physical and supernatural contamination.

Elegantly intoxicating in its atmospheric construction, “Fever Dream” maintains its incantation to its very final twist. Even as clues inch us closer to a logical explanation for the collective malaise, the mystical undercurrent Llosa sets in place fosters our doubt.

Fever Dream delivers its jolts with a whisper and not a scream, and its enigmatic final shot vibrates with a deep sense of dread, one that won’t leave after the lights come up.

The whole thing is a bit bonkers but very beautiful too.

Adapted from Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 novel of the same name, Claudia Llosa’s faintly delirious “Fever Dream” is a head-trip of a thriller that’s true enough to its title from the moment it starts; it’s a cold shiver of a film that doesn’t unfold so much as it sweats out, the most effective scenes febrile with maternal panic so intense that you can feel the movie hovering between life and death — allure and repulsion.

The film’s actual pay off – the truth exhumed from this tainted earth – is ultimately not quite as satisfying as the picture’s elegantly constructed mood.

Fever Dream never delivers on its promises and eventually collapses due to its cluttered narrative organization, unintentionally sluggish pacing, and an unbridled assortment of themes

The movie’s tedious overuse of voice-over cripples it.