These accusations pile up, context-free. Committed to accretion as an approach impossible to separate from its moral fervor, Leaving Neverland is a humdrum piece of filmmaking.
“Leaving Neverland” does not offer any new evidence of abuse, but it is nonetheless a gruelling and devastating film that asks viewers to reconfigure how they think about both Jackson and potential victims of rape.
The movie is unnervingly illuminating, as a new lens pulls focus on things we may have already known, deep down, about Jackson, but still don’t really want to admit.
[It’s] long but delicately, patiently done — and so quiet; you can practically hear yourself listening. It’s not a feat of investigative journalism so much as an act of bearing witness.
Over Leaving Neverland’s somewhat ungainly but generally gripping two-part, four-hour running time, Reed lets Robson and Safechuck tell their stories at a spacious, non-sensationalist speed.
Those who go into Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland expecting a sensationalistic, data-dump exposé about Michael Jackson might be surprised to discover something quite different. . . . We’re so used to the fast cutting of contemporary documentaries that seeing one that allows its subjects to speak at length has a rather bracing effect.