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Brilliant.

#90s#, story, (Julianne M)

A film I admire and respect the hell out of, but don't quite love (yet, anyway). Moore is one of my favorite actresses, and she's great as usual, and I love Hayne's restrained direction - the subtle camerawork, unnerving soundtrack and use of muted colors in particular - and the way the film defies classification. That defiance makes it a bit hard to grasp, but I have a feeling it will reward repeat viewings. A very impressive film.

A real middle class horror picture without any monsters at all. Julianne Moore is wonderful and Todd Hayne's direction is first-rate.

A deliberate excercise in existensial and physical revulsion, just vague enough to be truly unsettling.

Seeing it, hearing its low-level soundtrack, you feel just like Julianne Moore's Carol: unexpectedly sick, haunted and disturbed.

This movie has a subtle creepiness to it that I have a hard time pinpointing. Much like Polanski with Repulsion, Tony Haynes does a commendable job of making us feel that something is just off without really explaining what or why. Moore's great performance drives this feeling home.

A satirical drama with horror-like moments and some humor of the blackest kind.. Safe isn't easy to categorize. The cause of anxiety in the characters can be pretty much anything, and the point seems to be how fragile and easily influenced our mind and identity can be, as well as some obvious comments on the postmodern society. It loses momentum from time to time, but has some really tense scenes, like when the camera slowly moves closer to Moore, watching her break down. It's almost unbearable.

I am not the biggest Todd Haynes fan. It seems to be trying to say something about the nature of our society, but I think _The Incredible Shrinking Woman_ said it first and better

She speaks with a baby voice and never says anything substantial. It's infuriating. I see what Haynes was doing here, but it's a slow, frustrating, almost-boring watch with no real resolution end of it all. The mood is eery I suppose, but the entire film felt insignificant to me.

#725

I've never felt more dirty or repulsed while watching a film. The final image makes my skin crawl.

"Todd Haynes' enviro-disease masterpiece Safe might just be the most terrifying film of the last decade." - Sal Cinquemani

This nervous movie has enough ambiguity to make it heavily thematic, which ranges from disease allegories to upper-class lifestyle to environmental awareness to the dangers of furniture delivery. The second half compares well, especially visually, to the first half (a la Full Metal Jacket), but it feels like it loses some movement and cruises along in neutral, at least until the horrifyingly sad ending.

I am divided on this film. The sparse and wide open environments and the feeling of ennui is deeply unsettling and powerful. The problem arises in that Todd Haynes explains why this is happen to the character which takes away from the metaphorical implications of the work. Haynes clearly made this with a feminist interpretation, but by taking the film into a clear environment/social interpretation too distils what could have been a truly terrifying horror film about gender issues.

Despite the similar technique, Haynes doesn't even come close to parlaying minimalist filmmaking into the success that Antonioni and Jarmusch have been known for. Disappointing considering Velvet Goldmine was absolutely fantastic, Safe is without equivocation one of the worst films I have ever seen.

An incredibly creepy, creepy film. Nothing short of brilliant.

What the hell was this? I think the whole thing was just a big commercial for an environmental agency or something

Affecting at first, but loses momentum in the end.

Comic but not a comedy, dramatic but not a drama, mysterious but not a mystery, horrifying but not horror. It's an unclassifiable enigmatic mindfuck. Safe never takes aim at a clear villain, simultaneously indicting pollution, shallow pop psychology, wishy-washy cults, isolationism, the sterility of modern society and the lack of any true personal connections. And it's all executed with the most remarkable restraint. A haunting, entrancing look at the disintegration of a fragile identity.

Groundbreaking work for both Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore

A superb and original thriller by Todd Haynes that you can't see often.

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