The mood is relentless; the gears spark and grind quietly, but spectacularly... The essence... is damage, unexamined, and the pulse of trauma washing ashore.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 13, 2025

As an exploration of trauma and heartbreak, Exotica plumbs the depths of the human heart in ways most films have never dared.

| Apr 25, 2023

It is not a film about sex, but about the emotional impact, a setting provides with its cathartic assistance in healing trauma.

| Feb 14, 2023

a master class in complex narrative design in the service of dramatizing the depths of human emotion

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 17, 2022

Egoyan's soft, quiet tones, lived-in spaces, and characters that hide more than they reveal, are still bracing.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 24, 2022

For all the initial mysteriousness of virtually everyone’s actions, Atom Egoyan is never coy for the sake of being coy.

| Sep 22, 2022

A central part of the movie's dreamlike ambience derives from the fact that the camera is in motion in practically every shot.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2022

Passionless.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 10, 2022

Atom Egoyan makes his most conventionally-satisfying film in Exotica. I don't mean that as a putdown: it's his best movie, too, though some of his early academic-theory fans may be put off at its accessibility.

| Apr 10, 2018

One of the most despairing movies, and yet there is in the precision of its craft and the depth of its empathy something fundamentally uplifting.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 3, 2012

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 7, 2011

Egoyan's first Cannes Film Fest entry is an engaging tale of sexual desire and alienation.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 29, 2011

Uses its eroticism as a head trip into loneliness, alienation and desperation.

| Original Score: B | Mar 18, 2011

Egoyan's masterpiece -- a twisting tale of erotic obsession and hypnotic storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 22, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 20, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 7, 2005

Egoyan's intent is not ultimately to disturb us, but to look closely at people at their wits' end, desperate, and sad, in hopes of finding absolution for them.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jan 15, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2004

A mosaic-style thriller whose artful recipe is deepened in The Sweet Hereafter.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2003