Although the self-satisfied pop-culture in-jokes and diffuse plot can stretch the patience, the throbbing synth score nicely complements the VHS-era visuals.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2023

At 129 minutes, After Blue feels longer than this sort of film has any right to be, but it's certainly a singular experience. Beautiful and baffling in equal measure, it was tailor-made for queer film festivals and midnight screenings.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 5, 2023

Set in a world populated by women only, After Blue - the place and the film - is mesmerising, transgressive, bathed in saturated colours, and will no doubt be something very few people will visit.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2022

The production design goes heavy on glitter, crystals and slime, but can’t obscure the fact that the film has little of interest to say.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 10, 2022

It looks awful (the Manifesto insists on recycled sets) and plays like an overlong, slightly self-indulgent Barbarella remix. Quite the slog.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 7, 2022

After Blue is a preposterous film, easy to ridicule. But it’s surely already halfway to cult classic status...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 4, 2022

If ever you get the chance to jump off the deep end with a film so erratically gorgeous as this, take it and don’t look back.

| Sep 22, 2022

Freaks rejoice: this is a gem you’re not going to want to miss.

| Sep 22, 2022

Mandico's latest film is inarguably his most accomplished and is a thrilling, engrossingly surreal answer to the question of what may just happen to us as we near end times. A thrilling, captivating piece of filmmaking.

| Sep 14, 2022

As with a surreal dream, you either have to go along with it or else wake up and return to reality. While the ongoing weirdness ensures there’s rarely a dull moment, this has “cult film” written all over it.

| Original Score: 2.5 | Sep 11, 2022

This challenging movie has plenty of style to spare but searching for substance may be an insurmountable task for most.

| Aug 30, 2022

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) brings viewers into an all-woman acid trip dystopia, delivering more worldbuilding and set design than narrative.

| Aug 25, 2022

Truly a fever dream of a movie.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 25, 2022

Uneven and patchy as it can be, After Blue remains an exhilarating vision of an Eden gone awry, a portrait of humanity orphaned by a Waiting for Godot-like loneliness.

| Original Score: B | Aug 25, 2022

After the initial kitchy retro vibe of the production design, glow-in-the-dark paints and glitter wear off, there is nothing much to do for the cast, other than looking like being stranded in a darkly lit muppet show episode.

| Jun 27, 2022

You’re better off taking an edible and pressing play on Hounds of Love.

| Original Score: 5.5/10 | Jun 20, 2022

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) plays like a film one slowly falls asleep while watching, wondering just what one saw the next day.

| Jun 9, 2022

The kind of late-night soak that imprints itself directly into the kaleidoscopic surface of memory rather than as a direct experience, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is a sensual wallow.

| Jun 9, 2022

It's not for all tastes. But if you idolize the early films of David Lynch and Alejandro (El Topo) Jodorowsky, if you desire a 94% testosterone-free movie experience, & if you dream now & then of owning a complete set of Crayola crayons, look no further.

| Jun 7, 2022

After Blue would no doubt look like a work of genius if projected without sound. Its IQ drastically plummets when you have to actually hear what people are saying in it—still, this is a singular accomplishment that goes way out on its very own limb.

| Jun 6, 2022