58
Certainly, viewers may feel a kind of seasickness, their stomachs doing somersaults during this supremely discomfiting movie.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Rather than sensationalizing their subject, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor never forget that Issei, while clearly troubled or ill or both, is still a human being, too. It is a testament to the talent of the directors, who also shot and edited the film, that such a complex moral stance rises organically from their material.
100
CineVue by Christopher Machell
Caniba offers no trite explanations or condemnations of Sagawa. Instead, we are offered a small window into his reality.
50
Camera style aside, the subject matter of Sagawa’s atrocious crimes are pretty fascinating. But it’s the pace and moments of complete dead silence that kills (no pun intended) the tension you would think would be obvious when making a documentary about a living cannibal.
58
The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
As disturbing as the film can be, at the end of the day one doesn’t really take much away from it.
40
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
The filmmakers, who made “Leviathan,” the striking 2012 immersion into commercial fishing, seem to be arguing that Sagawa needs to be understood beyond moralistic preconceptions. Caniba did not make the case for me. I consider Sagawa repellent, and the movie an exercise in intellectualized scab-picking.
60
How illuminating or challenging Caniba proves for viewers will depend on their amenability to Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s amoral stance and literally up-in-your-face technique. Those who aren’t provoked by its ambiguous psychological inquiry, however, may wish for a bigger human picture from this relentlessly close-up exercise.
58
Sagawa is disturbed and alienated, but that doesn’t make him a compelling documentary subject in and of itself. Maybe that’s the point: Demystifying Sigawa takes away some of the near-mythic power that’s been attributed to him over the years.
75
Slant Magazine by Peter Goldberg
Throughout Caniba, there’s a singularly disquieting relationship between the filmmakers’ formal experimentation and their subject.