- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100This thoughtful, troubling drama is leagues above the sensationalistic stuff Araki peddled in earlier films.
-
90A gorgeous, heartbreaking and utterly convincing work of art.
-
89The film's content is adult – and for the first time in Araki's career, so is the director.
-
88At once the most harrowing and, strangely, the most touching film I have seen about child abuse.
-
88Not for the squeamish, but it is a beautifully crafted and thoughtful film that genuinely provokes.
-
83Mysterious Skin dawdles more than it flows, but it comes alive whenever Araki, hovering between tragedy and voyeurism, reveals how sex can tear lives to pieces.
-
83Invigorating, blistering and chilling.
-
80A warped, but beautiful and strangely hopeful, coming-of-age tale.
-
80With remarkable directness and composure, it shatters the myth of childhood innocence and the deathless taboo of prepubescent sexuality.
-
80It's hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse than Mysterious Skin.
-
80Explores both prepubescent and teen sexuality with an honesty that may make some people uncomfortable, which is a sign of its potency, and a badge of honor.
-
80A helter-skelter ride of the soul, an unblinking, white-knuckle crash landing into the mushy mysteries of the subconscious.
-
80A startling portrayal of how the cycle of abuse plays itself out in the lives of its victims.
-
75An absorbing story. Even though it takes you to places you may not want to go, the film never loses its human touch--that feel of skin on skin or of the past inescapably invading the present.
-
75Mysterious Skin bears all of Araki's hallmarks, from its stylish compositions and lush colors to its willingness to confront difficult subject matter head-on.
-
75A deft, affecting drama about childhood sexual abuse and its lifelong scars.
-
75The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic.
-
75The film is actually a major artistic breakthrough for Araki, a onetime bad boy of independent filmmaking. Its psychological intelligence, attention to emotional currents, and humanity are surprises.
-
75Unlike Todd Solondz's "Happiness," Mysterious Skin is not an abuse movie that seeks to offend or upset.
-
70It's an ideal collaboration: A stylish director desperately seeking substance transforms the first, somewhat flat novel of a promising young writer into powerful and brutally honest film about a highly controversial subject.
-
70Mysterious Skin isn't a picture about existential vacancy; it isn't even about anything so simplistic as the horrors of child abuse. It's more of a meditation on the necessity of making your way past, or through, any obstacle that prevents you from being a thinking, feeling person.
-
70Only half a great movie, because the other half follows a separate but related thread that isn't nearly as compelling.
-
70By turns spiky and lyrical, this unsettling drama will be anathema to many audiences, but is bound to be a provocative, talked-about release.
-
70The result is flawed but frequently haunting.
-
63A well-conceived story that is very hard to shake.
-
60By the end of Mysterious Skin, I felt physically exhausted but I also felt satisfied at the way it all falls into place.
-
60Corbet emerges as an actor of sensitivity and depth, but it’s Gordon-Levitt who steals every scene as the damaged, destructive but ultimately sympathetic rent boy.
-
60Mostly, Mysterious Skin creeps you out, and not in any kind of fun way. There's an artfulness to it, but it's hard to imagine many viewers actually using the term "enjoyed" or "entertained" in conjunction with it.
-
60Araki is trying to work from the inside out; and he captures feelings about sexual exploitation that I've never seen onscreen--not all of them negative.
-
40Dull film about pedophilia that fails to shed any light on the topic.
-
25Had Araki chosen to illuminate, rather than exploit, the traumatic aftermath of child molestation, his wallow in the horrors of Mysterious Skin might have had a purpose. As it stands, his film is just another trashy look at America as the land of imbecilic perverts.