To watch the film is to accept a merciless confrontation with colonial violence. It's also a step toward healing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 26, 2022

The Nightingale proves to be a powerful study of survival, rather than the trauma itself.

Full Review | Aug 10, 2021

The most shocking film of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2021

[The Nightingale]holds a darkly sober mirror that reflects the horrors of colonialism, racism, and misogyny.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jan 29, 2021

"An unflinchingly violent film that is not able to tackle its politics about gender, race and violence in a nuanced way. Brutal from beginning to end but never left satisfyingly avenged."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 27, 2020

The film cinematically captures the harsh elements of Tasmania and Clare's every emotion while the script splays open the traumas of these injustices from which only the most resilient can recover.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Nov 21, 2020

[Baykali Ganambarr's] performance... will tear you apart.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 27, 2020

The film even nearly falters because of its great emphasis on gratuitous violence. However, there are still some high points to be found.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2020

A very beautiful and compellingly told tale of a dark history, delivered with a sense of fury and anger that more than makes it searing and distinctive. Yet, in its rage, it threatens to lose sight of its audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 28, 2020

Filmmaker Jennifer Kent delivers a gritty, unflinching portrait of the Australian outback that's certainly quite compelling throughout...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 4, 2020

With a precise execution, Kent conceives a gripping and moving suspense film that, as a tale of revenge, addresses topics on violence against women and the corollaries of racism fabricated by the most implacable colonialism. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 27, 2020

The Nightingale strips back all varieties of artifice and fantasy, striving to represent a notoriously brutal period in Australia's colonial past as realistically as possible.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 13, 2020

It's a compelling movie but Kent's vision is too brutal. I couldn't get past its violent nature to digest the historic approach. [Full review in Spanish].

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 25, 2020

It is an extremely difficult film to watch. It's quite a smart film [...] and Jennifer Kent's direction is very accomplished. But I do think it's a legitimate question to ask whether [the brutality] is pushed a little too far.

Full Review | May 22, 2020

The Nightingale is disturbingly upfront about what it wants to show you, but frustratingly elusive about what it might be wanting to say.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2020

Kent's deglamorized, relentlessly unpleasant depiction of suffering couldn't be further from the adolescent glee of Tarantino's films. Still, there's something vaguely two-faced about Kent's revenge narrative.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2020

Its unrelenting (and repetitive) brutality is tough to stomach and, for some, will stumble over into exploitation territory (at heart, this is a revenge thriller from the 1970s).

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 15, 2020

It's unapologetic in the way Kent confronts the troubled past of her own country, although the equating of the abuse of white women to the near-massacre of entire race of people has continued to trouble this writer some days after viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 6, 2020

If anything, The Nightingale is proof that humans have always had the capacity to horribly oppressed others and deny them their rights in order to feel superior -- a world that still lacks justice for all.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2020

Just as it's unflinching in its portrayal of sexual assault and violence, so too is The Nightingale honest about the idea of revenge.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2020