Resurrection
Janus Films | Release Date: December 12, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
2
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMar 12, 2026
Resurrection, shot with extravagant beauty by Dong Jingsong, makes more sense on first viewing than the director perhaps allows. Each story is whole in itself. But it has the quality of a gorgeous knot that will never fully be untied. Read full review
100
Little White LiesJosh Slater-WilliamsMar 10, 2026
With such a moving ode to the symbiotic relationship between dreams and film, a nightmare would be if this is his final word on the matter. Read full review
100
The New YorkerJustin ChangDec 23, 2025
Resurrection, a magnificent intoxicant of a movie from the thirty-six-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan, is no ordinary love letter to cinema. It’s more like a love labyrinth—a multi-tiered maze, full of secret passages, shadowy rooms, and winding staircases, with a giant movie theatre, sculpted from candle wax, waiting at the incandescent finish. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonDec 15, 2025
With Resurrection, Bi delivers something uncommonly rich, boldly conceiving his latest as a salute to the history of film. Still, his focus remains on people — whether they be in his stories or watching in the theater. Read full review
100
Screen RantGregory NussenDec 13, 2025
Resurrection is both testament to the importance of storytelling, as well as the dangers of falling too far within its rabbit hole. But with stories as wrenching and images as evocative as these, why not jump in? Read full review
100
The Film StageZhuo-Ning SuMay 23, 2025
Narratively and stylistically chameleonic, it’s a sci-fi-flavored, century-spanning cinematic collage and profound invitation to dream. Bi Hive, rejoice: this is Palme material. Read full review
92
The Daily BeastNick SchagerDec 11, 2025
A tour-de-force of unbound creativity, its silky staging, enchanting performances, and playful inventiveness combining to make it one of the year’s undisputed big-screen highlights. Read full review
91
Original-CinAlice ShihDec 11, 2025
This is an artistic film best enjoyed in a theatre on a big screen, when the different shades of darkness juxtaposing against the shifting colours take you on a magical ride. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubJacob OllerDec 11, 2025
Divided yet compounding as the totality of Resurrection unfolds, our sharpened senses catch onto the details of Bi’s work, our awareness heightened around how many ways we can engage with the film in front of us, and movies in general. Read full review
91
The PlaylistChase HutchinsonMay 23, 2025
It’s a film with the power to fundamentally rewire your brain as it puts itself in conversation with the ghosts of cinema’s past. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 11, 2025
Strange describes the world of “Resurrection,” as does entrancing, tender, surprising, mournful and, at times, mystifying; it too is a labyrinth of a kind, one that Bi has filled with abrupt turns, elusive figures and shattering moments. Read full review
90
VarietyJessica KiangMay 23, 2025
For those who miss the way the movies used to act on us, it is a reminder of the uniquely paradoxical pleasures of immersion and surrender: a dazzlingly cineliterate lesson in the lost art of letting go. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerJan 2, 2026
What truly enthralls the viewer is Bi Gan’s journey through the history of cinema. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonJan 2, 2026
Bi Gan’s Resurrection is trippy cinema at its best, a nearly three-hour deep dive into experimental cinema. Read full review
85
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 10, 2025
The deeper that Resurrection goes, the more that Gan’s vision delicately, meticulously, and, of course, slowly envelopes you, no matter your level of comprehension. Read full review
85
TheWrapBen CrollMay 24, 2025
Many might come up with a sequence that overlays gangster and horror tropes with bursts of violence and dance; few would then toggle between first-and third-person perspectives; and only Bi Gan would have that first-person camera start singing karaoke. Read full review
80
Time OutAlice SavileMar 11, 2026
Cinema isn't just a medium here, it's a healing balm, able to save the Deliriant’s tormented soul by exorcising his darkest impulses and replacing them with moments of sheer filmic wonder. Read full review
80
The TimesEd PottonMay 23, 2025
This kind of unhinged ambition is what cinema does better than anything else. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 23, 2025
Packed with dazzling sets and effects, and touching on multiple genres and styles, it is a sometimes exhausting ride – especially when we’re struggling to engage with a changing cast of characters rooted in Chinese places, history, legend and religion. But it’s also a memorable and exhilarating one. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 23, 2025
There’s a hopefulness in Bi’s enigmatic concoction, not necessarily in what it’s saying but in how it’s being said, finding exquisite new forms in old and dead ones so that the cinema can keep on living. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 23, 2025
Its riddling quality, combined with its spectacular visual effects, may leave some audiences agnostic – and I myself wasn’t sure about the silent-movie type effects. Yet it’s a work of real artistry. Read full review
70
ColliderJason GorberMay 28, 2025
Resurrection is a puzzlebox to be probed, a dream not simply to be decoded to provide a singular interpretation, but one to be enraptured as you are caught up in its fragmented logic, soothed by its smoke-filled spaces, and stunned by the myriad connections shared between its two central characters. Read full review
58
IndieWireSophie Monks KaufmanMay 23, 2025
Is this impressive, boundary-pushing, experimental cinema or an endurance test with no internal logic where the chief pleasure is leaving the theater afterwards? Could it be both? Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comIsaac Feldberg Dec 12, 2025
Resurrection is ravishing in its command of shadow and light, but it studiously hollows out any sense of soul beneath the surface. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineEli FriedbergOct 3, 2025
At times, Resurrection seems to outright taunt viewers for trying to make sense of it all. Read full review
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