Critic Reviews

Achieves its goal of shining a spotlight on its subject while delivering a fascinating true-life tale.

Jacoby delivers an adroit portrait of the artist at work in a technical package which wraps itself smoothly around this intense, surprising story.

This intense documentary shows a driven creator walking the walk, so to speak, in the most perverse fashion possible. The story is both repellent and strangely inspiring.

[A] heartbreaking doc.

Shadowman is at its unsettling, want-to-look-away best when tiptoeing around the question of what makes for success regarding artists like Hambleton: the hoopla that keeps the work in circulation, or the mysterious inner pilot light that keeps a self-destructive talent going?

This is a gruesome art-world fairy tale unafraid to face the bitter details of its hero's tumultuous life.