✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Poland, United States · 2020
1h 40m
Director Filip Jan Rymsza
Starring Beau Knapp, Charlotte Vega, Jack Kesy, Olivier Martinez
Genre Drama
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In 2007, an awkward but brilliant Wall Street analyst finds himself in crisis as his models begin to predict instability and danger in the market. His fears are compounded by a menacing, growing swarm of mosquitoes living in his apartment, which he gradually becomes obsessed with.
As a kind of twisted social commentary, it doesn’t make much sense on paper, but don’t worry: It won’t make much sense on the screen, either, but Mosquito State manages to get under your skin and also to find moments of disquieting beauty.
Some movies try to entertain you; this one holds your attention like a bite that you can’t stop yourself from scratching even though you know it’s only going to make things worse. It’s hostile and off-putting to the extreme, but also too aggravating to ignore or stop watching.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Juiced up with nods to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and to classic David Cronenberg bug-outs, much of it set to insidious techno beats, this is commandingly creepy psycho-horror, even if its forbidding narrative loses momentum.
Mosquito State gradually allows its mise-en-scène to swamp its human narrative, not that the latter offers us much to care about anyway. As far as we’re concerned, the mosquitoes can have it all.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
In all fairness, the film is hard to enjoy, not least because its handful of intriguing ideas are so self-indulgently gussied up with ostentatious visual execution.
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