Anita Rocha da Silveira’s “Medusa” does brim with social commentary and reverence of several important topics and transgressions; its best moments are the fine-drawn subtle moments, albeit the last act doesn’t have significant motion.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 8, 2024

Religious fanaticism and oppressive masculinity hang heavy over Anita Rocha da Silveira’s visually resplendent and thematically compelling Medusa.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2024

It’s the strength between women that binds them together and finds themselves running through the streets expressing their sexual freedom, expression, and feminist rage.

| Sep 8, 2023

[Anita Rocha] da Silveira embarks upon surreal flights of fancy that invoke the 1960s Cinema Novo movement.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2023

It has everything you want in a film, a twisty plot, a great soundtrack that serves the finest synth-wave, feminine rage, and it’s shot beautifully. This is a must-watch for anyone interested in the monstrous feminine.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

Pulsing with darkly intense energy, this Brazilian thriller has a fantastical sensibility that's dreamlike. Beautifully shot to wash the night in vivid colour, the inventive storytelling style challenges the viewer to lean in closer.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 18, 2023

Its humid, colourful intensity updates the mood of 1977’s Suspiria and other Dario Argento films.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 18, 2023

A genre film with something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 16, 2023

... The satire becomes entirely toothless and badly muddled by magic realism, and the writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira’s initial target — Brazil’s far-right movement — drifts into the distance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 14, 2023

Albeit lacking in subtlety, this is a stylish film that revels in its ardent political commentary.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 12, 2023

It’s flawed and all over the place in conventional script terms, but there’s real interest in this freaky, peculiar, interestingly directed psychodrama satire...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 10, 2023

Ultimately, Medusa is so overstuffed that it can’t find a way to tie its myriad conflicting tones together, bringing down a movie that begins with so much potential.

| Jun 6, 2023

Brazilian filmmaker Anita Rocha Da Silveira presents an incendiary provocation on patriarchy with Medusa, a film that is so clear and loud on its criticism of Brazilian society that it is impossible to remain impassive to its message.

| Mar 8, 2023

By all accounts, "Medusa" should be a tonal mess, yet it compels its audience to lean in, listen, and contemplate the seething rage that permeates its every frame.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 13, 2022

A visually striking and timely fable about the horrors of an oppressive society. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 5, 2022

What begins as a punchy, feminine-biting satire becomes fuzzy after the first act. It’s an admirable effort, but an overstuffed, demanding one as well.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 27, 2022

Medusa shines when it focuses on the repression of women’s feelings. While on the surface, it looks like these girls enjoy spreading the word of God, deep down, there’s anger bubbling inside of them.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 1, 2022

It’s a precarious balance to hold complicit women accountable while retaining sympathy for them. Anita Rocha da Silveira never loses sight of either goal, even if it comes somewhat at the expense of the plot...

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 25, 2022

Anger unleashed with wild abandon. A heart-stopping comedy that is as arch as it is passionate, as ready to embrace absurdity as pathos.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Stylish but often slow-moving, the haunting drama Medusa effectively uses dream-like imagery to depict the damage of misogynistic bullying and the rebellion against this type of oppression.

| Aug 5, 2022