Todd Haynes’ Safe, led by a brilliant Julianne Moore, utilizes ambiguity and things left unsaid to become one of the most terrifying movies of the 1990s.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 11, 2025

Todd Hayne's stellar pseudo-horror film is elevated even further by Julianne Moore's utterly heartbreaking performance.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 16, 2023

Haynes' AIDS allegory is chilly, unsettling and confronting. Moore's quiet performance is exquisite and emotionally devastating; easily one of her best.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 16, 2023

It's a familiar question that can be answered a thousand different ways, taking you down a thousand different paths. Carol could be any of us when put in the right situation.

| Feb 1, 2022

In her first lead role, Julianne Moore delivers a dazzling performance as Carol White.

| May 10, 2021

The surreal, detached nature of Safe puts it firmly in the horror genre, even while tackling urgent issues that haunt us all. Moore, as always, doesn't flinch. It's a movie and performance that will have you questioning everything.

| Mar 9, 2021

It may very well be Haynes' most invigorating work precisely because of all the avenues of projection its fascinating obliqueness provides.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 29, 2020

Haynes does to us what his film does to Carol, cannily exploiting our willingness to find answers where there are none, to read meaning into associations.

| Apr 14, 2020

I found Safe's lack of answers both intriguing and frustrating.

| Original Score: A | Apr 23, 2019

Intended to be an exploration of the attitudes and anxiety surrounding the AIDS crisis, Safe still possesses the ability to leave viewers breathless and squirming in their seats.

| Nov 10, 2018

One of the all-time great films. Screams out with existential terror showcasing how the lack of identity is not only anxiety-inducing but potentially inevitable due to the modern world we live in.

| Oct 31, 2018

In many ways, 'Safe' predicts both the insular nature of contemporary society, and the (counter-intuitive) disease of conformity that's synonymous with it.

| Jun 7, 2016

For all its disquiet, Safe is truly about the terror of losing control-or, even more frightening, being made aware of the fact that we never had control to begin with.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 7, 2015

Safe is brilliant for the way Haynes, with cinematographer Alex Nepomniaschy and composer Ed Tomney, blankets the mundane in the eerie tone of science fiction and horror.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 10, 2014

Moore, evidently under Haynes' instruction, gives a performance composed of near-total inertia. Her pale lifelessness -- meant to be frightening, I suppose -- is merely irritating.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 24, 2013

With anti-star boldness, Moore doesn't so much embody the role as disembody it, dissolving before our eyes.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 24, 2013

Moore, in a nearly unplayable role, is amazingly vivid and touching; this is a heartbreaking portrait of a woman in full, panicked retreat from life.

| Jun 24, 2013

Frequently fascinating, it never builds into anything profound.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 24, 2013

Safe is numbingly fascinating, partly due to its carefully composed, antiseptic visual style and its throbbingly threatening soundtrack.

| Jun 24, 2013

You'd have to be cranky or blind to deny Haynes' artistry and vision. There's a dark power, a tremor that runs through the movie like the rumble of a secret dread.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2013