Critic Reviews

Like the creatures in the films, and many of Cronenberg's other films themselves, Shivers is disturbing on an almost biological level.

It was Shivers that laid the groundwork creating the blend of sex, distorted psychologies and horror which became Cronenberg staples and his signature style in the years to come.

A paranoid, prurient sexual nightmare.

Shivers exhibits the major characteristics of Cronenberg's canon, his use of architecture as reinforcement of the film's creepy tone and the deliberate reduction of men and women to a single, compulsively sexual aspect of their identities.

Misanthropic, indeed, but the black humour and general inventiveness place it high above most contemporary horror pictures.

It scares and shocks us because it's so cleverly made; the writer-director, David Cronenberg, uses invention and imagination to replace expensive shock effects.

A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.

Cronenberg's brand of body horror isn't to everyone's taste, but to call him a reactionary anti-sensualist who metes out grotesque punishment for sins of the flesh -- as detractors have -- is to miss the point.

It's apparent that someone connected with They Came From Within has an impertinent sense of humor even though the film is so tackily written and directed, so darkly photographed and the sound so dimly recorded, that it's difficult to stay with it.