The Carnivores

Medel's perfectly raw and queasily realistic performance of an already insecure mind coming wholly unhinged, and cinematographer Adam J. Minnick's canted camera setups and dreamy-dreary color palette, The Carnivores is a slow burning bad dream.

The characters don't exist solely to affirm the film's various themes, and as a result, their humanity gets under your skin.

There's something daring and memorable about Johnson's vision of possible mental illness and marital strife.

Caleb Michael Johnson's psychological thriller pivots on the possibility of love as a kind of all-consuming madness.

“Johnson doesn’t create a specific sense of place in ‘The Carnivores,’ nor does he develop the characters into anything more than cyphers for American angst that a million Sundance films have delivered before.”

Superbly well shot, this offbeat drama has a wonderfully observant quality to it, allowing characters and story elements to emerge organically amid scenes that are skilfully improvised.

It is difficult to care about a couple when both parties are deeply unpleasant.

Nothing here is particularly deep or likely to leave a lasting impact. . . . That said, it takes a steady hand to keep this sort of material feeling as modest as it does here.

Johnson is adamant in having the film be a somber character piece as well [as stylized horror], so the whole thing feels like a lumbering mess.

... struggles to explore its subtext with much depth, yet its subversive approach to genre elements leaves you hungry for more.