Cryptozoo
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: August 20, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistCarlos AguilarJan 30, 2021
To watch Cryptozoo is to open a Disneyland-size kingdom of ideas that never cease to astound. Read full review
91
The Film StageJuan BarquinJan 30, 2021
When something like Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski’s Cryptozoo comes along, it’s easy to recognize as one of the most gorgeous works of American animation in ages. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 19, 2021
Page by page, frame by frame, it seeks to cultivate your wonder and awaken your outrage, to spin a work of unbridled fantasy into a depressingly relevant critique of human callousness and greed in any era. Read full review
90
Film ThreatLorry KiktaJan 30, 2021
When you turn on Cryptozoo, you’re in for something that’s unlike anything else you’ve seen before. It is the most interesting and singular animated movie I’ve seen in years. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceyAug 18, 2021
Animation director Jane Samborski’s richly eclectic miscellany of visual styles depict a bestiary of mythic creatures and outré scenes of sex and violence that are matched to director/writer Dash Shaw’s allegorical narrative. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnJan 30, 2021
Brimming with constant new ideas and visual innovation, Shaw’s work captures the flurry of thought and motion at the center of dangerous times, and even dares to make them fun. Read full review
80
The GuardianLeslie FelperinOct 21, 2021
While a certain disarming naivety infuses the work, it nevertheless packs an evocative punch, with a moral message about intolerance and the need to protect more vulnerable species. It’s also one of the few films that could potentially induce a psychedelic trip with its visuals alone. Read full review
80
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaAug 19, 2021
Cryptozoo stands out as an aesthetically ambitious undertaking, seducing viewers with its hypnotizing hand-drawn animation and John Carroll Kirby’s pulsing electronic score. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangJan 30, 2021
In this zoo, the story may be tame, but the images, and the imagination that releases them, run wild. Read full review
80
Screen DailyAllan HunterJan 30, 2021
Despite all the influences that have been brought to bear on Cryptozoo, it still very much feels like its own creature. Read full review
80
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeJan 30, 2021
This time out, the writer-director (in collaboration with animation director Jane Samborski) is even more assured as both a storyteller and as a crafter of images, be they outrageous or gorgeous, haunting or hilarious. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussAug 18, 2021
In every way, Cryptozoo is a more ambitious achievement than Shaw’s coy but pleasing first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2016). And while its hippie-era setting and hallucinatory imagery give a nostalgic kick, the film’s darker conflicts speak to dire issues of today. Read full review
73
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganFeb 1, 2021
Interested in interrogating the exploitation of fantasy and imagination for human consumption, Shaw’s psychedelic, patently adult animated feature brings daydreams into the pointedly violent and bleak reality that its genre contemporaries are privy to ignore. Read full review
72
PolygonTasha RobinsonJan 31, 2021
Nothing about where the story is going or how it’ll get there stylistically can be taken for granted. That’s one of the biggest joys of Shaw’s projects — the sense of something new and different happening, of that anti-capitalist, anti-conformist, anti-containment bent that stretches throughout the story also extending into every aspect of the film’s aesthetics. Read full review
70
IGNRafael MotamayorAug 26, 2021
Cryptozoo may be overstuffed with ideas, but its central dilemma is a fascinating and poignant message that carries a dazzling animated adventure. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 11, 2021
Its freewheeling storytelling often feels slapdash, its hippy-dippy earnestness a touch simplistic and its central allegory is lifted straight out of X-Men. But there's a nonstop fusillade of imagination at work here that commands attention, even when the balance of art-school inventiveness and child-like fantasy threatens to topple into chaos. Read full review
70
SlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiJan 31, 2021
With its flat hand-drawn characters moving briskly across the richly detailed backgrounds, Cryptozoo is bursting to the seams with dazzling, shocking, brutal (and edgy, this is an adult animated film, remember) visuals. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJake ColeAug 16, 2021
Dash Shaw’s deceptively simple animation regularly descends into phantasmagoria that delivers on his story’s strange premise. Read full review
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