Utterly bizarre in the best possible way, this lovingly handmade animated feature by writer-director Dash Shaw (originally a comic book/graphic novelist) isn't like anything you've seen before.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2021

Its ugliness I find to be deliberate, and there are beautiful moments... [Cryptozoo] is a tiny bit of a mess, but I admired a lot of it.

| Aug 21, 2021

An unusually timid animated fantasy that looks like outsider art, but often moves and sounds like bad pulp fiction.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 20, 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.

| Aug 19, 2021

Moments of digressive filigree-occasionally tinged with eroticism, and inspired by old pulp fantasy illustrations-tend to get flattened out by a plot too tediously plain for a film with such a funky premise.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 19, 2021

A rapturously hallucinogenic daydream for mature audiences.

| Aug 19, 2021

While its hippie-era setting and hallucinatory imagery give a nostalgic kick, the film's darker conflicts speak to dire issues of today.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 18, 2021

Dash Shaw's deceptively simple animation regularly descends into phantasmagoria that delivers on his story's strange premise.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 17, 2021

There is a certain charm to Shaw's deadpan comedy... but one visit to the Cryptozoo was enough for me.

| Aug 16, 2021

This psychedelic paean to biodiversity and acceptance in a xenophobic world is alternately marvelous and messy.

| Feb 4, 2021

This should solidify [Shaw's] rep as one of the most exciting new creators of cinematic animation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2021

Yet for all this thoughtful plotting and intriguing visuals, this adventure feels flat.

| Feb 1, 2021

Cryptozoo winds up as a window into a decidedly uncommercial mind, and a form of storytelling that isn't the practiced, polished committee effort that comes out of animation houses like Disney and DreamWorks.

| Feb 1, 2021

It's a less-funny Adult Swim cartoon that drags on far too long for the little emotional investment it cultivates.

| Jan 31, 2021

This time out, Shaw (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.

| Jan 30, 2021

At times meandering and messy, Cryptozoo remains nonetheless a wondrous vision - itself a mythical creature in the context of cinema.

| Jan 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.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 29, 2021

The storytelling retains a childlike, sometimes childish quality, a naivete that can be frustrating and often rather enchanting.

| Jan 29, 2021