Synopsis
A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous fight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.
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Cast
- Edith MeeksFelicia Beacon ("Hero")
- Millie WhiteMillie Sklar ("Hero")
- Buck SmithGregory Lazar ("Hero")
- Anne Giotta Evelyn McAlpert ("Hero")
- Lydia LafleurSylvia Manning ("Hero")
- Ian NemserSean White ("Hero")
- Rob LaBelleJay Wete ("Hero")
- Evan DunskyDr. MacArthur ("Hero")
- Marina LutzHazel Lamprecht ("Hero")
- Barry CassidyOfficer Rilt ("Hero")
Recommendations
- 89
Austin Chronicle
The way the individual stories are intercut builds connections between the seemingly discrete tales such that they begin to converge in ways that were not readily apparent. Repeated viewings, I'm sure, would enhance the connections, so smartly are they conceived. - 80
Time Out
The disparate styles and the absence of clear links between the stories make for unusually provocative viewing, because their shared themes (deviancy, alienation, persecution, monstrousness) are merely implied through the cutting. Compelling and quirkily intelligent; Genet, one feels, would have been impressed. - 80
Variety
Haynes has composed three distinctive stories that constitute case studies of antisocial aberrations, shot them in three strikingly different styles and intercut them in surprisingly successful ways. - 70
Newsweek
Poison's rich layers of juxtaposed images can't be easily digested in one viewing. The acting is uneven, the lighting sometimes dim, the tone at times deliberately awkward. But this suggestive, discordant movie takes you places you haven't been. - 70
Los Angeles Times
Haynes says the theme of his movie is deviance, which seems right. It's also clear that the poison of the title is, partially, society's attitudes toward the three deviant characters -- whom it beats up, imprisons, hunts down. That's what makes the reaction to Poison so ironic. The foes of the movie -- and the people who want to take down the NEA because of it -- seem bent on proving that its paranoia isn't a fantasy. [03 Apr 1991, p.F1] - 67
Entertainment Weekly
Only one of the episodes, a satirical documentary about the mysterious disappearance of an enraged suburban boy, has much resonance on its own. A part of me wishes that Haynes had sold out after all: What’s truly revolutionary about this filmmaker — his perverse, ironic humanity — is only intermittently on display in this quasi-provocative formalist knickknack. - 60
The New York Times
Poison, which won the grand prize as the best fiction work at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is an imaginative film that, like the infectious Tom Graves, is eventually overwhelmed by its ambitions. The movie needs to evoke more than the ghost of Genet to give it resonance. - 60
Washington Post
Todd Haynes's Poison is a vision of unrelenting, febrile darkness. It presents three disparate stories in three greatly varied styles, all inspired by the work of Jean Genet, and its effect, as a whole, is like that of an especially vile infection; it moves diabolically through your system, spreading fever and nausea as it goes.
