Director Zachary Wigon’s Sanctuary is trying very hard to be both thrilling and erotic, but all that comes through is the effort. Just watching is exhausting.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 17, 2023

It’s a love story, sort of, and whatever limitations are set by the location are obliterated by the performances.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 9, 2023

It's exquisite... Very sophisticated, and not very much about sex, either.

| Jun 6, 2023

Sanctuary is a playful piece of work—an exercise designed to keep its actors limber and to make us delight in their flexibility. Hopefully, Qualley will get even more opportunities to stretch soon enough...

| Jun 2, 2023

Zachary Wigon directs this slithery two-hander with style, making what could feel like a stage production a playful exercise in intimacy, trust and betrayal.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 1, 2023

The deepest pleasures of Sanctuary are in how Abbott and Qualley suck every drip of pleasure out of Micah Bloomberg's script.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 1, 2023

It’s a chamber piece, a theatrical hothouse, as faux as phony can be.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 31, 2023

About halfway through the night, this particular viewer was thinking about calling a Lyft and leaving these two shallow, petty and immature narcissists to themselves.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 31, 2023

[Sanctuary]t upends the romantic comedy genre’s usual approach to relationships with a delightfully demented but surprisingly sweet tale about sex, power, and, most shocking of all, love. It’s loads of sick fun — if that’s what you’re into.

| Original Score: B+ | May 29, 2023

What is supposed to be an erotic power struggle between two interesting people... turns out to be an endless argument between two nitwits.

| Original Score: 0/4 | May 23, 2023

Writer Micah Bloomberg’s script ingeniously incorporates the movie’s themes into its structure, and Qualley and Abbott—but especially Qualley—playfully keep the audience guessing throughout.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2023

All the excellent acting and sumptuous style can’t cover up that the culmination of this tête-à-tête is disappointingly hollow with an ironic bow on top.

| May 19, 2023

If you’re someone who regularly bemoans the dearth of movies for adults, then take heart: “Sanctuary” is here for you.

| May 18, 2023

This is a theatrical story told in a purposefully and self-consciously theatrical manner.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 13, 2023

Despite the imperfections within Bloomberg’s screenplay, Abbott and Qualley sell the hell out of it – they possess an easy chemistry that fluctuates between desire, desperation and despisal.

| Mar 7, 2023

There’s no way to get a total read on what Qualley’s protagonist is up to, which turns out to be the primary thrill of this snapshot of personal, professional, and class warfare.

| Sep 16, 2022

The film has the confidence and generosity to allow the audience to ask its own questions before it makes its first (of many) giddily upending reveals.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 16, 2022

What makes Sanctuary such a salaciously enjoyable slice of snack-sized fun is how it argues that some people have more to give than they would ever know without the right person to take it from them.

| Original Score: B | Sep 14, 2022

The performers here have such generous chemistry with one another and it’s a joy to watch them play out this psychosexual commentary on gender and power roles with such artistic fervor.

| Sep 14, 2022

A twisty, surprisingly heartfelt battle of wills.

| Sep 13, 2022