Synopsis
A twisted journey of two women’s desperate flee to escape the clutches of Skylight, an insidious cult. Lured in by the promise of “freedom” in the isolated desert campus called The Aviary, Jillian and Blair join forces to escape in hopes of real freedom. Consumed by fear and paranoia, they can’t shake the feeling that they are being followed by the cult’s leader, Seth, a man as seductive as he is controlling. The more distance the pair gains from the cult, the more Seth holds control of their minds. With supplies dwindling and their senses failing, Jillian and Blair are faced with a horrifying question: how do you run from an enemy who lives inside your head?
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Cast
- Malin ÅkermanJillian
- Lorenza IzzoBlair
- Chris MessinaSeth
- Sandrine HoltDelilah
Recommendations
- 90
Film Threat
The Aviary is a stunning work of art about how people get sucked into something offering a glimmer of light and how that light becomes distorted. - 80
Los Angeles Times
An excellent cast and some skillful direction goes a long way toward making “The Aviary” feel genuinely revealing. - 75
The A.V. Club
Writer-directors Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite give us two unreliable narrators to follow on a similar, intertwined path to personal, earth-shattering discovery in The Aviary—and the results make for a visually striking, sonically spooky, and deeply unnerving picture. - 67
The Film Stage
I wouldn’t say Cullari and Raite necessarily give us anything we haven’t already experienced with the genre or themes, but they utilize them with deft hands to keep us invested in the characters and, by extension, the mystery connecting them. - 50
Austin Chronicle
The Aviary, a modest mindf*ck of a thriller about two young women fleeing a cult in the New Mexican desert, goes round and round and round in a circle like a snake swallowing itself. A beguiling metaphor, but by the end, you’re left with a self-cannibalized movie. - 38
Movie Nation
The things that should make it work are here, most of them anyway. The fact that it doesn’t draw you in or deliver an ending with impact doesn’t mean it couldn’t have. - 38
RogerEbert.com
The Aviary experiences a drop in quality during its attempts to goose the audience, but its two lead performances remain consistent.
