The reviews are almost uniformly admiring, and they admire the same things. Most critics call it a deeply disturbing psychological thriller, and the praise settles on how completely Polanski builds a warped world from inside Carol’s head, so that her collapse looks reasonable to her and terrifying to us. The sound design comes up again and again, as does the violence of the imagery, both cited as the reason the film gets under the skin rather than merely startling. Several also single out Deneuve’s subtle, watchful performance and the film’s precise small details over its shocks.
The spread is narrow. Only one review holds back, and even that is not a complaint about craft: Eye for Film finds it hard to sit through and reads it chiefly as a study of how women are neglected and mistreated, with Carole’s reactions making sense from where she stands. Nobody argues the film does not work; the only question is how much of it a viewer can bear.