Amirpour takes on the Big Easy, mixing a heady cocktail of EDM beats, Hollywood treacle and southern sleaze and sipping down Bourbon Street.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
IndieWire by Christina Newland
Most of the movie’s machinations seem merely in service of deepening the central gambit, which is to follow Mona’s journey and to look cool while doing it. On that front, it succeeds, but the movie’s charms are limited when the originality it purports to offer only feels like a bit of a costume.
This is a midnight movie/B-movie-type work that knows exactly what it is––there’s no pretensions of “elevated horror” here. Mona Lisa is smart, politically aware, and reaffirms a bit of faith in Amirpour’s talent.
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon is a blast.
The Hollywood Reporter by Lovia Gyarkye
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon solidifies Amirpour’s reputation as a master of subversion.
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon is a lark, a contradiction — a lurid, violent, caught-in-the-gutter movie that’s also a nimble and knowing tall tale for adults.
Amirpour’s career to date offers a triptych of stories of women navigating men’s worlds, and needing all their nous and resources to survive in them – and this is her most straight-up enjoyable survivor tale yet. It’s a feminist parable that may not linger as long as in the mind as her more provocative debut, but it’s irresistible fun in the moment.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
The film is ultimately little more than a trifle, but Hudson is the cherry topping: as this messy, crafty, grasping nightmare, the actress is more fun than she’s been in years.
All seamy New Orleans sleaze, with a neon and nylon aesthetic, the film relishes its own trashiness. But the writing is not focussed enough to make this much more than a cheap thrill.
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon offers street-food for the senses, served with lashings of hot sauce. It’s hardly nutritious but it tastes fine in the moment, wolfed down on the run.