The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Its enchantments are dark, its ideas somber and brutal.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Spain, Japan · 2015
1h 15m
Director Pedro Rivero
Starring Andrea Alzuri, Eva Ojanguren, Josu Cubero, Félix Arcarazo
Genre Science Fiction, Animation, Drama, Horror
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Birdboy and his animal friends plan their escape from an ecologically devastated island in this surreal, animated fantasy.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Its enchantments are dark, its ideas somber and brutal.
What makes Birdboy: The Forgotten Children so effective is the ability to turn the innocent into the macabre.
This is a beautiful film, and an ugly one, and the tension between those two sides doesn’t abate until the very last scene.
We Got This Covered by David James
Psychonauts, the Forgotten Children is bizarre, imaginative and beautiful, but it's also crying out for a stronger narrative.
Though at first glance this ironically-sweet-and-very-sour mix might seem unappetizing, even repellent, it soon becomes fascinating in its oddball complexity.
The movie is grisly and its sense of humor is mordant, but it winds up communicating a heartbreak that’s pretty straightforward, all things considered.
Slant Magazine by Keith Watson
Alberto Vázquez and Pedro Rivero's film is a phantasmagoria of impressionistic horror, at once despairing, beautiful, haunting, and surreal.
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
As adult animation goes, Birdboy is its own weird, woolly and surprisingly sensitive foray into the grimmer corners of life. But at its best, when Vázquez and Rivero hit the right mix of melancholy and acidic in their battered fever dream, it plays like a troubled schoolkid’s secret drawings brought to colorful, if unapologetically horrific, life.
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
Though its dark riches can at moments feel like overload, and its narrative thrust occasionally grows diffuse, the story casts an undeniable spell.
Village Voice by Sherilyn Connelly
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children is its own unique, damaged creature.
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