Feels fairly thin.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 18, 2021

There's little dialogue to interrupt the onslaught of imagery, which actually hurts the potential for audiences unfamiliar with Giger's history to enjoy the film.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Dec 4, 2020

Sallin skillfully shows this horrific fantasy as disturbingly close to reality, lending Giger's work a relevance that its gruesome nature might otherwise overshadow.

| Feb 6, 2020

Belinda Sallin's skimpy look inside the home of the Swiss artist H.R. Giger in the final months of his life would have made a brilliant episode of Cribs, but it's just a doodle as a feature-length documentary.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 15, 2019

[H.R.] Giger's work tapped into the otherwise unremembered trauma of the perinatal journey; all he really knew was that in general he put his exquisitely creepy visions on canvas to keep them from freaking him out.

| Aug 24, 2017

It's the small details that lead us to the conclusion that the artist was not only capable of giving shape to a decidedly perturbed subconscious, but felt exceptionally comfortable in it. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 5, 2016

A dignified tribute to a very provocative figure.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 22, 2016

Only a few of the personal responses or reminiscences here are truly interesting. But it's Giger's images alone which hold our gaze, confronting and confounding us, intriguing and chilling, snaking and startling.

| Feb 9, 2016

Belinda Sallin's documentary brings us into Giger's world as if we're the crew of the Nostromo in Alien exploring a mysterious planet.

| Nov 9, 2015

If you always wanted to watch Giger sign autographs or sit in meetings, "Dark Star" will be your jam.

| Original Score: C | Jul 14, 2015

In the Alien films, the primal, violence of Giger's bio-mechanical creations cause people to run from the darkness. Dark Star: HR Giger's World beckons you to embrace it, in its own darkly entrancing way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 10, 2015

For fans, a revelation. The Goth's Picasso.

| Original Score: A minus | Jul 3, 2015

The film captures both the claustrophobic and melancholic mood of Giger's house, and also, perhaps, his mind.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 2, 2015

"Dark Star" is really aimed at an audience interested in Giger's work. For the rest of us, it s interesting and educational as a good documentary should be.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 2, 2015

The pacing never quite clicks -- but the artist's fans won't mind. It's more time with the monsters.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 25, 2015

This is an inescapably sad movie about a one-note artist who acquitted himself best when unseen, working alone at the easel.

| Jun 25, 2015

Sallin balances enlightened perspective on Giger's mythopoeic style - his feverish fusions of flesh, exoskeleton and machine, probing depths of the human condition - with casual rhythms of his daily life.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 25, 2015

Feels rather staged, as if you can hear Sallin telling Giger to, for instance, open the front door and look contemplative, or walk through his museum and look contemplative.

| Jun 24, 2015

Writer/director Belinda Sallin's documentary about Giger was filmed during the last years of the artist's life, his mobility already curtailed, so her documentary is somewhat housebound. But what a house!

| Original Score: B | Jun 22, 2015

The spectre of imminent mortality ... adds a layer of poignancy to what might otherwise have been a more prosaic, if still totally interesting, portrait of an eccentric creator.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 9, 2015