Popular reviews

• 

  Review by brat pacino ★★★★ 8

  unexpected but welcome addition to ACAB canon — cogent narrative choice for the cops to refuse to help the plucky gal reporter because she wrote articles denouncing police brutality. horror films often fall into the trap of relying on police to save the main characters’ lives, so it’s refreshing to see that subverted in a realistic and meaningful way. 

  also love how she explicitly called them out for not caring about the case because the violent perpetrator was a white woman and the victim was a Black man — demonstrates screenwriter Louisa Rose’s understanding of the insidious history of systemic racism, which i think is imperative for anyone writing any piece of media featuring cop characters. easily my fav non-Carrie De Palma!

  (watched after reading about it in chapter 2 of House of Psychotic Women by Kier-la Janisse, a book i highly recommend for fans of horror/exploitation films!)

• 

  Review by Sean Baker 15

  Revisited this film after approx. 30 years on the Arrow Films Blu-ray.

  I forgot how giallo influenced this film seems to be. And the split screen sequences are awe-inspiring. Masterful.

  Extras and booklet included with the Blu-ray are nice.

  RIP Margot Kidder

• 

  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 1

  Little bit of Hitchcock, giallo, Rosemary's Baby, slashers and what would eventually become the psychosexual science-fiction of Cronenberg going on here. Creates a very strong formal tension between De Palma's classical Hollywood thriller style and the shocking violence/bizarre, sensationalist modern detail that he populates it with. The climax of the film that combines three different psyches battling it out in extreme close-ups, real memories, implanted flashbacks, POV/split screen images, and fake archival footage which are also dreams (??) before exploding into sex and violence is nothing short of insane. That no one really solves the central case feels quite appropriate with how this movie is designed to make you feel.

• 

  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★ 1

  Amazing choice to set this on Staten Island

• 

  Review by Ian West ★★★★½ 5

  Psychosexual Hitchcockian giallo slasher with sci fi and Rosemary’s Baby shades hits all my beats and then some—an excellent early low budget/high style entry from De Palma, with a great and very fitting score from monolithic soundwave god Bernard Hermann, a terrific turn from Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, and my boy Charles Durning. I love that a movie that focuses so heavily on conjoined twins features so many split screen shots.

  Essential 70’s wickedness—a classic De Palma masquerade.

• 

  Review by Adam Nayman 3

  Maybe the funniest last shot of any De Palma movie, though there’s plenty of competition.

• 

  Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 2

  i try and i try and i try so hard to love De Palma and it just never takes... FEMME FATALE remains the only one of his films i've enjoyed from start to finish, which is probably unwise to admit. the strange bit being that BDP's fetishes and fixations could not possibly dovetail more completely with my own... i just never seem to be having as much fun as he is.

  that being said, the opening sequence, the sanitarium flashback, and of course the all-timer split-diopter sequences worked their magic on me.

• 

  Review by Sally Jane Black 4

  Another Hitchcockian crime film from De Palma draped in sleaze and a sort of tabloid sensationalism, this film falls slightly too far on the side of trashy at times while indulging heavily in De Palma's favorite influences. Like Body Double, this film owes a debt to Polanski as well as Hitchcock (though the former is much more present in both). Hitchcock toyed with his share of risque or over-the-top material, flavoring his storytelling with it, but De Palma seems to go the other way, flavoring his sensationalism with tension-fraught storytelling.

  The absurd premise is played mostly straight, but De Palma's sense of humor has always been darkly delivered. This is no different--even though he goes for thrills before laughs, you…

• 

  Review by ✨Angelica Jade Bastién🔮 ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  this film is going to haunt me for a minute. found this one mad disturbing especially the ending which offers no true resolution for the death of the black man, which sets off the major arc of the story and sees its lead irrevocably (?) altered by the incidents and people she’s faced. 

  love the split screens and shadow play. i also love how brian de palma’s camera moves through danielle’s apartment. but of course what drew me to the film is the way that ideas of the feminine grotesque and (racial) libidinal capital play out. even though i had an idea of where the film was going, but i found myself surprised n terms of narrative and visual grammar…

• 

  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★½

  Very different than Ratatouille

• 

  Review by Tony the Terror 666 ★★★★ 4

  It’s been so long since I watched this Hitchcockian thriller that I totally forgot just how Hitchcockian it is!

  A reporter witnesses a murder and decides to investigate only to find herself in the middle of a story that could be her last! Obviously, there’s the plot homage to Rear Window, but there are so many similarities to Hitchcock’s entire aesthetic. If I were to watch this without knowing anything about it, I would probably think it really was by Hitchcock. Not that De Palma doesn’t add some nice touches on his own. There’s a split scene sequence that is just brilliant.

  I love Margot Kidder. Every role she plays has that subtle hint of batshit crazy and I am…

• 

  Review by Joe ★★★★★

  I used to think this was where the sinfully slick De Palma was born and the darker, angrier, and more political twin of his earlier movies was put to rest. But the truth is his predatory and acerbic half is in full effect here too, taking on any and all comers from the frivolous (perverted game shows, private eyes) to the still socially relevant decades later (cop racism, white liberal racism, birthday cake). Much like Dominique he never really died, lurking, sometimes almost invisibly, even in DP's most polished and commercial studio films. This, however, is their greatest collaboration.