Despite the creativity on display, the character choices and fatal decisions feel cliched.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Dare to peek under the scales of this wholly original and ominously enchanting nightmare, and you’ll find a simple story about the things that society forces a girl to give up if she wants to be part of our world.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
Agnieszka Smoczynska's film is most poignant when it simply stares at its own strangeness.
Consequence of Sound by Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
The Lure somehow manages to seamlessly assemble a film equal parts hilarious, affecting, and grisly while trading and warping aesthetics and tones by the scene.
This kooky-monster escapade is never less than arresting, and sometimes even a riot.
The Hollywood Reporter by Justin Lowe
The filmmakers’ enthusiasm for their characters and the vanished period setting is palpable, asserting a certain fatalistic charm of its own.
The Lure’s premise alone will turn heads but once the novelty wears off the question will remain: where’s the story?
Village Voice by Odie Henderson
The film's messages are cleverly wrapped in Smoczynska's entertaining, original vision. It's sexy, fearless, fun, and unrepentantly nasty.
Crafted as a kaleidoscope of color and nightclub sparkle, The Lure's glitter does not distract from the fact that this is a technically confident and often quite accomplished piece of filmmaking, with a rare ability to dance intuitively between linear plotting and phantasmagoric fantasy.
Screen International by Wendy Ide
The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.
Somehow simultaneously hilarious, heartbreaking, and terrifying. I didn't expect the ending scene to hit me as hard as it did.