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      Repulsion

      1965 1h 45m Horror List
      96% 67 Reviews Tomatometer 86% 10,000+ Ratings Audience Score In Roman Polanski's first English-language film, beautiful young manicurist Carole (Catherine Deneuve) suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry), Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness. Read More Read Less Watch on Fandango at Home Premiered Jul 18 Buy Now

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      Repulsion

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      Critics Consensus

      Roman Polanski's first English film follows a schizophrenic woman's descent into madness, and makes the audience feel as claustrophobic as the character.

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      Audience Reviews

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      Alejandro E Roman Polanski's first film in English was an effort to play Alfred Hitchcock; without emulating it, of course. The atmosphere and the background score perfectly synthesize a plummet into madness. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 04/21/24 Full Review nick s A slow movie with a simple premise. Though it was fascinating to watch. The director took his time with every shot, creating a much more voyeuristic feel than a typical movie. The long, gently moving takes were particularly engaging. You do need to put up with a meandering first stanza, but the movie does pack a lot more punch near the end. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 11/10/23 Full Review Alec C Brings you a churning feeling in your stomach every time you watch the woman lose her sanity. Intense cinematography and disturbing imagery gives us an other-wordly feeling of fear. By the end, we too are repulsed and shocked at what we just witnessed. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/07/23 Full Review Ekaterina P Polanski. Immediate, awful taste in my mouth. Reminds me of everything bad and awful. Charles Manson. Rape. Paedophilia. And yes, he is a paedophile. This is undeniable. Watching a work of art created by a criminal of a moral ranging from low to entirely unacceptable is always difficult and has to be done with a lot of caution, where it aligns with your morals and ethics. But on the other hand, so many artists of every kind have been outed having done reprehensible things, it becomes almost impossible to enjoy any creation if you do not wear the glasses of future past. We are trapped in the world of immorality, "wearing rose coloured glasses so that all the red flags look like flags." Cancel culture does not exist, and there isn't a single person in the world who doesn't get new chances. Polanski, just like many other paedophile rapists, continues to receive honors and job offers from above, despite the very many vocal protests from the public. The incredible irony is that the film "Repulsion" is about a woman terrorized by men, some of whom have her in some sort of power (like the landlord.) And perhaps even more ironic are the reviews written by men, speaking of the "decent admirer whose honest love might be exactly what she needs." It brings into the question whether everything we are seeing are her hallucinations, but being a woman myself, I really cannot help but experience everything in this movie as reality in some way or another, including the doubt that it brings into whether or not this is real - as this is something that us women are awfully familiar with on a mass scale. Scrubbing all of that off of our brains, there is no denying that this film is highly influential. So many modern horror classics like "It Follows", "The Babadook" and "Hereditary" cite as having this film being one of the influences, where some influences are a lot more on the nose than others (rabbits and pigeons and wall hands, oh my.) Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 10/04/23 Full Review Petros T What "Repulsion" really succeeds in is the depiction of the protagonist's mental unraveling; Catherine Deneuve is very convincing as the listless Carol, the explicit and insinuated themes are hefty, and the photography and production design are suitably nightmarish. However, the narrative is pretty limited and even repetitive, the character insight is scarce, sometimes hallucinatory moments disrupt otherwise perfectly realistic scenes, and all in all the film never manages to truly captivate. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/05/23 Full Review Shioka O Polanski's first english work. Very young Deneuve did a challenging role here. French in London. There are some hallucination scenes, but this is a decent psychological paranoia drama/thriller rather than horror, I think. Again, I like the effective use of sound effect and jazzy score in his film. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Critics Reviews

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      Andrew Sarris Village Voice Repulsion is the scariest if not actually the goriest Grand Guignol since Psycho. Jul 27, 2021 Full Review Peter John Dyer Sight & Sound The rest of the film has that gurgling, soapy sound of muffed intentions going down the plug hole like bath water. Mar 31, 2020 Full Review Derek Malcolm London Evening Standard Deneuve, as the woman whose fear of sexual contact is at the base of her neurosis, has seldom been less like her icy self. Rated: 4/5 Jan 4, 2013 Full Review Tim Dirks Filmsite Co-writer/director Roman Polanski's disturbing, tense, frightening horror-psychological thriller was about the mental deterioration into schizophrenia of beautiful, timid, vulnerable and paranoid young 18 year-old blonde manicurist Carol Ledoux Nov 3, 2023 Full Review Howard Waldstein CBR Repulsion is often imitated, but never repeated, and few horror films have a similar walls-closing-in feeling that this one does. Deneuve also delivers a powerhouse performance, bearing the brunt of selling an incredible lean narrative of horror. Jun 27, 2023 Full Review Pauline Kael Vogue Were we supposed to have found it entertaining? There's more horror latent in this notion of the movie audience than in the film itself. Feb 27, 2020 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis In Roman Polanski's first English-language film, beautiful young manicurist Carole (Catherine Deneuve) suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry), Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.
      Director
      Roman Polanski
      Producer
      Michael Klinger, Tony Tenser
      Screenwriter
      Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach, David Stone
      Production Co
      Compton Films, Tekli
      Genre
      Horror
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Nov 16, 2010
      Runtime
      1h 45m
      Sound Mix
      Mono
      Aspect Ratio
      35mm
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