The strength of Carnival of Souls lies not in the big reveal, which is obvious almost from the beginning, but in the unsettling mood it creates and the striking images Harvey puts on the screen.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 1, 2025

What Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls lacks in budget, it more than makes up for in inventiveness.

| Jun 27, 2023

With a dreamlike spin, the film explores the dark side of the '50s American ideal of a perfect society... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 14, 2022

Carnival of Souls isn’t a complete stunner for me (though damn close) but it’s a resonating, effective piece of work that nudges those feelings of lonesomeness we often face with a moody, nightmare-tinged quality.

| Oct 31, 2022

More than just a paranormal haunting, it is conformity itself that drives Mary to madness.

| Oct 27, 2022

... there’s something uniquely American about this mix of fantasy, horror, and modern alienation.

| Oct 9, 2022

For all its odd haunting moments, Carnival of Souls is best appreciated knocked off its pedestal.

| Sep 26, 2022

Its imagery evokes not a horror of blood, but a horror of loneliness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2022

It's hard to imagine female-driven horror films, like Alejandro Amenábar's The Others or David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, without its precedent, but Carnival of Souls exerts a haunting, strangely affecting spell all its own.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 26, 2022

As a piece of film craftmanship, it'd beneath contempt.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 24, 2022

If not quite a neglected masterpiece, it shows what could be done by atmosphere and suggestion before the days of slash and splatter.

| Sep 24, 2022

It's good enough to make you nostalgic for the old, pre-slasher days of horror.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 24, 2022

A memorable chill without resorting to cliched horror devices.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 24, 2022

The movie evokes menace, a nameless dread, without ever resorting to explicit violence.

| Sep 24, 2022

There's no gore and only minimal chills. The movie could bore, rather than, scare you to death.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 24, 2022

Crisp, unpretentious and eerie.

| Sep 24, 2022

It is the limited B-picture format which gives the film some of its distinctiveness, for better as well as worse.

| Sep 23, 2022

Haunting, oddball movie.

| Sep 23, 2022

Few real chills, but plenty of atmosphere.

| Sep 23, 2022

Simply can't be dismissed as the latest camp item.

| Sep 23, 2022