The Handmaiden
Amazon Studios | Release Date: October 21, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireAndrew LowryApr 3, 2017
The Handmaiden is at once a superlative thriller and a deeply erotic character study, but it’s the intelligence, mordant wit and depth of characterisation that are the real turn-ons. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorOct 27, 2016
Park’s Handmaiden is a great big chocolate box of a movie in which a rich and satisfying narrative is enlivened by some piquant erotica and the sharp tang of politics. Read full review
100
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonOct 27, 2016
Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a jaw-dropping, pulse-quickening mash-up. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 27, 2016
It’s a beautifully filmed, wonderfully challenging, multi-layered tale of trickery upon trickery, short con upon long con, deception upon deception. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 27, 2016
Elegantly depraved and immaculately degenerate, Park Chan Wook’s The Handmaiden is an astonishment. The filmmaking is masterful, very near to Hitchcock in its sly, controlled teasing of the audience. Read full review
100
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerOct 26, 2016
The Handmaiden is film at its most exhilarating by a director at the height of his powers, and it’s the kind of singular rarity that must be savored when it comes around. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 21, 2016
It is voluptuously beautiful, frankly sexual, occasionally perverse and horrifically violent. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonOct 20, 2016
Thoroughly entertaining, startling and highly erotic film. Read full review
100
ScreenCrushBritt HayesSep 26, 2016
Perhaps the most surprising turn in The Handmaiden is that Park has knowingly subverted his own iconography by delivering one of the most beautifully romantic films of the year. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungMay 21, 2016
Expectations are fully met in Park Chan-wook’s exquisitely filmed The Handmaiden (Agassi), an amusingly kinky erotic thriller and love story that brims with delicious surprises, making its two-and-a-half hours fly by. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Oct 26, 2016
A fiendishly clever, sinfully funny con-job melodrama, the kind that keeps yanking the rug out from under everyone on screen and off. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanOct 20, 2016
So suspenseful, sexy, and surprising that it would be a shame to say any more. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 27, 2016
The Handmaiden is everything, in that it is a mystery, a graphically erotic romance, a black comedy and a little bit of a horror story. And, of course, really good. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 20, 2016
Without sacrificing his taste for psychosexual perversity or his flair for violent grace notes, Park has given us a teasingly witty and elegant puzzle-box of a thriller whose pleasures are rooted not in visceral shock but in narrative surprise, and which wisely opts to seduce rather than pulverize its audience. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 20, 2016
A rebus, a romance, a gothic thriller and a woozy comedy, The Handmaiden is finally and most significantly a liberation story. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiOct 26, 2016
An engaging and evocative thriller/love story, The Handmaiden is ultimately a tale of freedom and transformation, as satisfying as an exquisitely choreographed four-course meal. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniNov 3, 2016
Far too good to be watched in one sitting. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 3, 2016
Deliciously perverse, delightfully twisty, and unapologetically erotic. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 27, 2016
You have, I promise, never seen a movie quite like Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. It’s a period drama gone mad; a lavishly colorful, beautifully-filmed-erotic-revenge-crime thriller set in 1930s Korea. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezOct 27, 2016
This may not be Park’s best or gravest picture. But it might be his most entertaining. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 21, 2016
No matter its overarching ridiculousness, The Handmaiden remains a hugely enjoyable dose of grotesque escapism from a master of the form. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 21, 2016
An intensely pleasurable, lavishly shot dessert tray of utter hokum, The Handmaiden is a prime example of why we should be glad that there’s someone out there still invested in the overwrought Gothic melodrama, and that that person is Park Chan-wook. Read full review
82
The VergeEmily YoshidaSep 10, 2016
By replacing the class system of Victorian England with the dynamic of the occupier and occupied, Park has tapped into something uniquely complex about a chapter of history that is rarely explored. There is a deep, festering malady at the heart of The Handmaiden, exacerbated by idle fantasy, cultural projection and denial. Read full review
80
Total FilmJordan FarleyApr 10, 2017
A ravishing period piece that simmers with sexual tension while pulling off some dazzling narrative gymnastics. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 28, 2016
I still don’t know how a gore-meister like Park Chan-wook could have made the year’s most irresistible romance. Maybe it’s that he hates oppression — chauvinist, colonialist, Sadean — so deeply that in hoisting his old boys on their own petards, he has discovered the wellsprings of love. Read full review
80
Time OutTom HuddlestonOct 21, 2016
It doesn’t all work: The pace can feel a little slow, and there are points where Park tries to have his tasty feminist cake and eat it too. But mostly, this is smart, sumptuous and wonderfully indulgent. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 17, 2016
Park has conjured up not only his smartest but also his most stirring film to date. And the least icky. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 21, 2016
The film reveals its twists and turns with a delicate hand and always manages to stay one step ahead of the audience, even as most of those watching will surrender to the hypnotic erotic charge that runs through the film. Read full review
80
The GuardianBenjamin LeeMay 21, 2016
Given the nudity on show, some are already quick to criticise Park’s direction as gratuitous and to claim that his male gaze is affecting the depiction of lesbian romance. But the impotency of the male characters helps to counter this while the sex scenes themselves, as lovingly shot as they might be, feel vital to the narrative. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 21, 2016
The film manages the tricky feat of both staying true to Waters breathless, page-turning prose, and creating a wholly persuasive new milieu for the story. Read full review
80
VarietyMaggie LeeMay 21, 2016
It’s sybaritic, cruel and luridly mesmerizing. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 1, 2016
The thriller is mildly thrilling, the intrigues reasonably intriguing. But it’s the sex that sells this. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoOct 27, 2016
It’s an intricate thriller about a con game, but so loaded with wicked humor and sensual appeal — ravishing cinematography, high-temperature eroticism — that for long stretches viewers might forget there’s any plot at all. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenOct 12, 2016
With The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook has made a gigantic leap as an artist, but he retreats to lurid cartoonishness just as he’s earned your trust. Read full review
70
New York Daily NewsEdward DouglasOct 21, 2016
The nearly three-hour runtime, though, may be one of the film's biggest hurdles. But the time seems necessary for a story that adds more layers the further we're taken down the rabbit hole. Read full review
67
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 21, 2016
Those familiar with Park’s earlier work will know that he’s hardly the most subtle of filmmakers, and his approach to gender politics here is risible, even self-contradictory. His customary prowess as a stylist and knack for constructing and navigating intricate plots, on the other hand, is once again put to good use. Read full review
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