This evocative adaptation of Scott Heim's acclaimed novel is an impressive return to form for writer/director Gregg Araki (The Living End, The Doom Generation). More to the point, it's his best film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 31, 2024

A harrowing, but ultimately compassionate film that will stick with you long after the credits roll.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 20, 2024

Araki's fearless adaptation of Scott Heim's novel is challenging and uncomfortable. Featuring a stand-out performance by Gordon-Levitt and intimate, unflinching close-up camerawork by the writer/director, Mysterious Skin is important and powerful.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 15, 2024

No-one was better equipped to capture the mood of youth coming to terms with a post-9/11 reality.

| Nov 9, 2023

The genre falls under coming-of-age as both characters enter their late teens, but its subject matter is handled delicately within the realm of coming to terms with the tragedy that connects them.

| Mar 7, 2023

Araki makes everything deceptively enjoyable to watch...

| Dec 1, 2022

Despite its prickly subject, Mysterious Skin, with its stellar young performances, gloriously original soundtrack and outstanding direction, is a film that begs for repeat viewings.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 4, 2020

The finest film of Gregg Araki's career.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 17, 2020

Gregg Araki brings Scott Heim's harrowing, fantastic, and darkly funny novel brilliantly to the screen.

| May 7, 2020

The result is surprisingly in keeping with Araki's nihilistic talent and Heim's dreamlike fairytale narrative.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2019

A seemingly impossible act of making an intelligent, literate drama about child abuse without being conventionally didactic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 1, 2019

The movie sugarcoats nothing, but it doesn't revel in its own darkness either. It sheds a clear, compassionate, illuminating light.

| Feb 28, 2018

Like most good films, this one demands something from you, not just you from it. Some may run for cover, or for the exit, but those who stick around this strange and rich film will be sent out floating.

| May 11, 2016

[...] For a movie about something as painful as child sexual abuse, Mysterious Skin doesn't repel. There's an allure to the images, which are as carefully posed and framed as figures in a softly illuminated dollhouse.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 17, 2014

Contains a few flat notes of community participation, but Araki locates all the necessary surges of hopelessness and misguided desire, ending victorious in his quest to adapt Scott Heim's provocative novel.

| Original Score: B | Mar 7, 2014

a bizarre, beguiling coming-of-age drama

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 21, 2010

treads harrowing ground without falling into the pit of clich

| Original Score: B | Sep 15, 2009

Araki's film is a wrenching examination of childhood trauma and abuse.

| Apr 29, 2009

"Mysterious Skin" is a devastating yet beautiful film that honors its fragile characters with vital respect.

| Original Score: A | Apr 15, 2009

Even with the numb dialogue and trite characterizations we've come to expect from Araki, Mysterious Skin might have worked with the right actor in the charismatic role of Neil.

| Mar 1, 2007