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Safe

Safe

1995
Drama, Suspense/Thriller
1h 59m
Set in an affluent neighbourhood of the San Fernando Valley in 1987, the film recounts the life of a seemingly unremarkable homemaker, Carol White who develops multiple chemical sensitivity.
Your probable score
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Safe

1995
Drama, Suspense/Thriller
1h 59m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 64.89% from 963 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(963)
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Rated 14 Aug 2007
96
98th
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.
Rated 30 Jun 2009
3
74th
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.
Rated 23 Mar 2019
65
47th
Safe is a stylistically cold and distanced study of the clinical alienation that comes with wealth and technologic progress. Carol starts to question her affluent and banal housewife life, feeling depressed and anxious. Yet her world is so penetrated by values of hygiene, order, and conservative morality that she can't even accept that hers is an emotional yearning. In that sense, this a bleak and pessimistic account of vanishing humanity in our techno scientific class societies. Interesting.
Rated 17 Mar 2016
60
48th
An odd mix of Cronenbergian style body horror and Antonioni like artistry, Safe was an unusually heady American 'indie' film for its time that traded in fashionable irony for complete seriousness. The cold clinical tone is eerily precise: it traps Carol/Moore within the frame, highlighting her isolation, powerlessness and increasing sense of dislocation. It's a moody urban dramatic 'horror' about the problems of modern living, but it bites off more than it can chew and overstays its welcome.
Rated 01 Dec 2014
25
11th
kut saaie film voor depri wijve en ik moet da dan t8 geve pff...cuculiza: "A genuine horror film disguised as a psycho drama. And it's truly terrifying." hahaha wa ne ziiieeeevereir
Rated 28 Dec 2015
9
90th
The driving question in Safe is, "What is it that really ails Carol?" What's so insidious about this question is that it appears to be unanswerable. It might be a metaphysical question, but the revulsions of her body make us believe it's something more, something tangible. It might be an empirical question, but the limits of science prove to be inadequate; medicine and psychology fails her. Yet, this invisible agony pops up everywhere; in Carol, in you, in me. The horror is in not knowing why.
Rated 05 Jul 2017
90
95th
There is a lot to be thankful for when it comes to Todd Haynes, but two reasons, in particular, come to mind with Safe: Julianne Moore and anxiety. The craft displayed in pasting literal anxiety onto the screen is mesmerizing. Moore is fantastic in her first leading role as she chews the screen with her empty stares and nervous smiles.
Rated 18 Mar 2020
88
83rd
Disturbing to say the least, the privileged individual that becomes troubled and obsessed with their ailments to the point of no return, is just depressing.
Rated 08 Sep 2010
5
91st
A fascinating portrait of paranoia, modernity, and the yearning for acceptance. Moore is one of my favorite actresses, and she's great as usual. 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.
Rated 18 Feb 2017
50
23rd
Starts off good, but grows boring after 45 minutes, tedious after an hour or so, and the true horror comes from realizing you've wasted two hours of your life to something this pointless. Suspense comes from waiting for it to end, drama from explaining your spouse it was suggested by Criticker, and Criticker rarely misses. Moore's great, though, she's a great actress.
Rated 17 Mar 2020
90
93rd
Dangerous material.
Rated 18 Jan 2021
85
85th
A Lynchian horror film if Lynch cared about a narrative that made sense.
Rated 27 Jun 2021
75
49th
I'd heard this described as "Julianne Moore is allergic to everything"; making me envision The Housewife in the Bubble. That poor marketing doesn't tell you that this is a dark psychological drama on Reagan era suburban fears of AIDS, crime, and pollution. The cult sequences are so realistic they approach docudrama. I'm okay with the ambiguity of the disease being psychological, environmental, or a mix. Yet, I wish the ending didn't seem as though the film merely stopped. Still, recommended.
Rated 20 Dec 2008
90
95th
A superb and original thriller by Todd Haynes that you can't see often.
Rated 26 Mar 2009
90
95th
A genuine horror film disguised as a psycho drama. And it's truly terrifying.
Rated 21 Jul 2009
82
68th
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.
Rated 22 Mar 2010
90
95th
Brilliant.
Rated 02 Oct 2010
100
98th
I've never felt more dirty or repulsed while watching a film. The final image makes my skin crawl.
Rated 07 Sep 2012
99
99th
Undoubtably Haynes' greatest achievement and his one film where the themes and concepts he chooses to explore blend seamlessly into the compelling narrative he frames them in. Yes there are many ideas here (enough that many films would have merely chosen one of them to focus on, and many have, far more shallowly than here), but it is not only a film about suburban anomie, pollution, AIDS, or phony New Age self-help gurus. It's about all these things, and much more.
Rated 29 Sep 2012
100
98th
This is a film that touches on so many of the themes and ideas that I find fascinating in both cinema and life and does so in a way that is consistently haunting and unnerving. Julianne Moore also gives one of her very best performances.
Rated 20 Oct 2012
67
21st
I'm not sure how I feel about SAFE. Maybe I read too much about it beforehand, maybe I was too tired, maybe I just wasn't in the mood--but it really didn't do much for me. It seemed like the themes were put across too obviously, the only real touch of mystery coming at the very end. Also (and this may have been my fatigue), the final third basically grins to a halt. Julianne Moore is quite good and it's decently well-directed (and makes some excellent use of sound)...but I wasn't impressed.
Rated 11 Aug 2013
77
52nd
Creepy, eerie drama/social commentary has many fascinating things to say about pollution and (unexpectedly) cultists masquerading as self-help -- "pass your valuables to the front" a sickening line on 2nd watch -- marked by a brilliantly understated performance from Moore, and terrifying ones by McGregor-Stewart and Friedman as the self-help gurus, who's dangerous rationales are all too persuasive. A neccesary clinical tone keeps a degree of distance...
Rated 17 Nov 2013
55
16th
The first of many movies in which Julianne Moore is desperate, unsafe and insecure.
Rated 15 Mar 2014
82
83rd
Julianne Moore gets all crazy because of the chemicals.
Rated 28 Jul 2015
90
97th
A haunting movie. The height of their career for everyone involved.
Rated 08 Mar 2016
6
34th
More substantive in its less than flattering depiction of upper class pomposity than in its portrait of a dejected young woman struggling with issues of self-identity. Especially since the latter continually teeters on the verge of self-parody to the point where it becomes unintentionally hilarious - if not hopelessly misguided. Moore gives a great turn, however.
Rated 04 Apr 2016
94
95th
An accomplishment in tone and performance. The use of perspective is crucial. Suffocating wide shots. Unconventional coverage makes when terror strikes feel sudden and inevitable. The synth score works until the final scenes, supplanting silence from the first half with aimless noise. The feeling of isolation, lack of emotional catharsis for the protagonist, us knowing she's likely incapable of ending this phase of her life, is reminiscent of A Woman Under the Influence in the best possible way.
Rated 21 Jul 2017
85
83rd
Haynes wrings terror out of the mundanity of sterile, upper class suburbia during the superficial '80s in a tale about the alienation of bourgeois privilege and the need for security from uncertainty as he frames the characters in their domestic spaces. The film anticipates the modern obsession with holistic medicine and anti-science conspiracies, but it's also an investigation into a uniquely-American brand of female objectification, capitalist claustrophobia, and the associated anxieties.
Rated 07 Sep 2019
70
76th
good movie
Rated 02 Mar 2020
70
77th
Existential dread, social alienation, libidinal depletion and environmental contamination produce a thoroughly auto-immune situation, ripe for exploitation by the cults of self-help. All the elements are in place, and the film does generate an unsettling and uncanny mood, but the flatness of the presentation combined with the lack of events in the second half mean that the impact is diluted somewhat. May be one that produces a delayed response, seeming in retrospect to increase in significance.
Rated 23 Mar 2020
85
79th
the soundtrack is HOT julianne moore is HOT the cinematography is TASTEFUL, need i say more? run, don't walk, to see this hidden gem of a film, folks. but seriously though, folks, a new mutant has entered the cadre of deformed beauties in my favourite genre, 'psychological disintegration'.
Rated 06 Apr 2020
70
26th
A vacuous movie about vacuous yuppies saying nothing new. It'd be one thing if there was some enjoyment out of watching this film (there is none) or there was some greater insight to be learnt from experiencing this art piece, but no it just drones on over the same themes that have been rehashed over and over since Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899.
Rated 17 May 2020
60
35th
A commentary on chemical sensitivity and mental illness that starts with an almost-sleepwalking Carol and the banality of life. It felt like it didn't push far enough on its main topics, never mind the additional ones introduced (like the self-help guru, or the random man on the cover who's in the movie maybe ten seconds). Throughout, I couldn't help feeling "first world problems" even though I suffer from "sensitivity to smells" as well. Strong performance by Moore.
Rated 08 Jun 2020
90
91st
Impeccably dark and creepy. Great performance by Julianne Moore. Great soundtrack too.
Rated 09 Aug 2020
55
18th
Some nice images and exactly one great wordplay joke, but I didn't really connect to any of it. Especially second half is just sitting around in a desert camp.
Rated 12 Nov 2020
100
97th
A masterwork in dread filled atmosphere and sound design, with a message that works both as a critique of the alienating society we live in, and in turn, people's alienation from each other, and vice versa. A horror movie more astute than many of the genre's best, focusing on a subject matter that is even more relevant today, and all too closely relatable in both its sense of isolation and its questioning of reality.
Rated 01 Dec 2020
85
93rd
Low-budget Todd Haynes at his best.
Rated 03 Feb 2021
3
72nd
Very unique, thought provoking. Julianne Moore shines here.
Rated 18 Feb 2024
80
87th
Well informed take on hypochondria and compulsions, spiralling into an anxiety for everything eating, inhaling or touching the skin, basically a fear to live. It lets the viewer decide what they see throughout the whole movie, including the ambiguous ending. It spoonfeeds nothing. Which is nice, because what if it contained chemicals or toxins? A very succesful film! And look at the amazing poster
Rated 27 Feb 2024
90
95th
A masterclass from Moore and Haynes on psychotic decompensation and the difficulties of responding to it. The last part contains a surprising power: the guru, whom I expected to excel in quackery, creates a non-judgmental therapeutic climate that creates mental space for the participants and allows them to look beyond their complaints and connect with selflove, forgiveness, compassion and values in life. Maybe Carol is already drifted too far, but what else is there?
Rated 14 Aug 2007
95
84th
Groundbreaking work for both Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore
Rated 14 Aug 2007
39
2nd
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.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
29
8th
What the hell was this? I think the whole thing was just a big commercial for an environmental agency or something
Rated 14 Aug 2007
72
25th
Affecting at first, but loses momentum in the end.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
85
89th
An incredibly creepy, creepy film. Nothing short of brilliant.
Rated 02 Mar 2008
68
48th
# 645
Rated 30 Apr 2008
48
32nd
Frustratingly noncommittal.
Rated 07 Aug 2008
72
78th
I definitely need to revisit this.
Rated 19 Dec 2008
67
34th
669
Rated 17 Mar 2009
85
58th
The first hour is really good, and Haynes unfurls the details at a right enough pace to keep you hooked. This all evaporates in the second half, when the film loses any sort of suspense or passion.
Rated 14 Apr 2009
87
87th
Julianne Moore makes the film with an increasingly captivating performance as a woman consumed by fear of everyday life. The strange mystery underlying the film falters but is made up for by wry social commentary and an odd blend of humour and horror.
Rated 11 Jun 2009
60
47th
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
Rated 08 Jan 2010
83
89th
Seeing it, hearing its low-level soundtrack, you feel just like Julianne Moore's Carol: unexpectedly sick, haunted and disturbed.
Rated 15 Jan 2010
65
30th
694
Rated 25 Mar 2010
93
91st
A real middle class horror picture without any monsters at all. Julianne Moore is wonderful and Todd Hayne's direction is first-rate.
Rated 21 May 2010
75
71st
A deliberate excercise in existensial and physical revulsion, just vague enough to be truly unsettling.
Rated 10 Sep 2010
54
71st
#90s#, story, Julianne M.
Rated 19 Oct 2010
40
97th
"Todd Haynes' enviro-disease masterpiece Safe might just be the most terrifying film of the last decade." - Sal Cinquemani
Rated 03 Apr 2011
72
43rd
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.
Rated 07 Oct 2011
50
27th
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.
Rated 02 Dec 2011
64
28th
#725
Rated 05 Jul 2012
85
75th
The music sets an ominous sci-fi tone as Carol gets sick. The composition is incredible; most of the shots are mid to wide shots with very few close ups. It keeps the audience at arm's length, perpetuating the isolation felt by Carol as those around her are regarding her more with scrutiny than sympathy or empathy. Her doctor is frustratingly incompetent, basically saying "I don't know what's wrong with you so it's your fault! "
Rated 14 Feb 2013
16
10th
conveys very little for a 2 hour long film
Rated 27 Feb 2013
87
72nd
A very, very effective psychological thriller. Julianne Moore gives a great performance as a paranoid, neurotic woman who finds her sterile, upper-class lifestyle threatened by everything around her. The sterile environments and tinnitus-inducing dead air have left an impression on me that have stuck with me for years.
Rated 21 Dec 2014
87
82nd
Todd Haynes não é tudo?
Rated 24 Feb 2017
82
91st
"Love yourself"
Rated 04 Jun 2017
7
22nd
In Safe, the main character is a mirror and a symbol. Barely there, as thin as can be both emotionally and just as a character on the page, Carol is either a symbol of how any random person will succumb to the unintended side-effects of contemporary society, or how any random person can be entirely lost in psychosomatic illness. I'm not entirely sure what, if any, message or lesson one should take from this film. All I know is that Carol is so barely there that it starts to drag the film down.
Rated 30 Aug 2018
71
37th
the problem with my ratings is that i try to pick out arguably good films to watch and because of that, good-but-not-impressive-enough-films like this end up being tier-5 or below.
Rated 13 Mar 2020
95
97th
Too long, but I'm amazed that such a film could be made. So evocative of time and place: amazing mise-en-scene and cinematography in two different settings (LA and ABQ). An artful film with an axe to grind: I see it as a critique of the "psychosomatic" diagnosis, which is exploited by both the medical industry to sidestep the unknown and by new age kooks for monetary gain. Demands incredible empathy from the viewer.
Rated 25 Nov 2021
72
58th
Is it?
Rated 27 Sep 2022
67
24th
the build-up of the illness of Julianne Moore was pretty decent and giving that uneasy feeling, however, the movie went downhill in the second half. this subject could've been used way better than just going to a rehabilitation center and having cheesy conversations
Rated 26 Jan 2023
84
72nd
Works a lot better on rewatch when you know it’s not just doing some cliche Gen X “allergic to *society*, maaaan†thing. Wonderfully eerie and confounding.
Rated 14 May 2023
80
77th
Perfect lead performance and great music.
Rated 17 Jul 2023
85
85th
While it's often not classified as such, it's hard to view this as anything but a horror movie, and a very good one. While it might fall apart ever so slightly due to its own ambiguity, the realistic scenarios depicted are as scary as any ghost or monster. To some degree it's up to the viewer to decide what to make of it, but it's extremely well done with an amazing performance by Moore.
Rated 26 Sep 2023
6
40th
First half seems to ask pertinent, deep questions, the rest plays like propaganda. So, it's very progressive. Moore's performance survives it.

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