Carmilla is beautifully shot, with the appearance of a Vermeer painting: all dark domestic realism and candlelit corners.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 10, 2024

Carmilla is a boldly beautiful and thought-provoking film. It may be slow and melodramatic in places, but you can’t help but become fully invested in this world.

| Oct 3, 2024

Carmilla proves to be a successful adaptation that will appeal to anyone looking for some unearthly shivers, or a coming-of-age story where being conscious of one’s own sexuality takes centre stage.

| Sep 21, 2023

If you’re looking for something spooky, yet romantic, Carmilla will certainly pique your interest.

| Sep 26, 2022

...effectively composed... unsettling production design and an appreciation for atmosphere that does not indulge in horror-movie parlour tricks.

| Original Score: 16/20 | Apr 30, 2021

This slow-paced, atmospheric film has an almost dreamlike quality.

| Oct 30, 2020

A horror story gets transformed into a mood piece about sexual awakening being thwarted by religious hypocrisy.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 24, 2020

Writer-director Emily Harris tells this story with skill and artistry, spinning a sensitive, visceral tale and lacing it with proper grisliness.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 22, 2020

The film is big on flickering candles, gory erotic dreams and close-ups of insects, but it builds into a nicely executed take on villainised lesbian love.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 19, 2020

Flirts with vampiric blood lust but is most satisfying when it delves into the superstition and repression that squeeze the breath out of life for young women...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2020

If only all debut films were like this: story, style and substance.

| Oct 19, 2020

Harris displays real promise with her first solo feature film; sinking her teeth deep into the original novella's themes of fear and persecution, and elegantly translating them for a modern audience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2020

A vampire story in spirit only, this clever and deliberately low-key adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's garish gothic novella is a study in moral ambiguity and 19th-century religious hypocrisy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 16, 2020

Admirers of Le Fanu's source material may enjoy this traditional interpretation of gothic seduction, but those craving more bite for their buck will be left hankering for something more modern and salacious.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 15, 2020

Director Emily Harris' de-fanged adaptation follows plenty of other versions of the novella, zeroing in on the "lesbian vampire" aspect, but the result is deathly dull.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 15, 2020

[This] creepily atmospheric film is let down by some awkward dialogue and a weirdly bloodless lack of intimacy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 15, 2020

Raine is the standout among the cast, delivering a piercing performance as the repressed governess, but her bright-eyed young co-stars struggle to make this love story truly blaze with passion.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 13, 2020

Those expecting a standard genre exercise may be frustrated by the film's restraint. But on its own terms, it's a sufficiently haunting portrait of the dangers inherent in stifling nature.

| Oct 12, 2020

The tragedy of female oppression and the thrill of sexual discovery merge in Emily Harris's heady, streamlined take on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 Gothic novella.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2020

Can't help but feel this tale of bloodlust and sexual desire has been de-fanged.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2020