Critics reviews

Strickland ultimately settles on a kind of anti-capitalist, consumerist satire, something about how the things we own wind up owning us. Frankly, by the time he gets there, according to your mileage, you, like me, may have already checked out.

There is a sort of degenerative decadence to In Fabric, not only in how often it goes there, to a place of low-brow humor... but also in its thoughtful cinematography and composition, in the eerie movements of that red dress... for giallo fans in particular, the surreally voyeuristic experience of In Fabric is visually engrossing and unshakably uncomfortable.

Strickland frequently tests viewers’ patience, but his off-putting sensibility is powerful enough to make “In Fabric” as mesmerizing as its subject matter: salesmanship as a sinister, inescapable form of hypnosis.

In spite of an excessive, metaphor-bash of an ending — forgivable when everything else on screen is this frenziedly fun — “In Fabric” seduces like its bias-cut main character, then taunts you for your desire.

Strickland's films, while profoundly cerebral, are always meant to processes playfully and instinctually. Like a breathy Serge Gainsbourg song caught on celluloid, it's evocative as the feel of silk sliding over skin.

If In Fabric is initially hindered by the literalism of Strickland's vision, it still manages to prove irritatingly suspenseful, at times even pleasurably shocking... It becomes a better movie—and makes you wish it’d been a great one.

In Fabric... is a profoundly English work, steeped in a knowing mundanity that nicely plays up the weirdness; in fact, this film is so thoroughly English that it feels more like a foreign director’s fantasy about the strangeness of Britain. It’s English in the same way that Antonioni’s Blow-Up was, or Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End.

“In Fabric” unfolds in a twilight zone where capitalism is a kind of dark magic, people become slaves to shopping, and the language of corporate-speak casts its own cultish spell.

As much as Strickland has learned from Bava and Argento, here he is more of England than of the Continent. In a relentlessly stylized fashion, the film insistently evokes the Britain of power failures and inflation and creepy public-service films.

For all of its curated channeling of past midnight-movie programming, In Fabric doesn’t feel like it’s cut from the same cloth as anything else. It’s a singular trip into a singularly warped mind.

There are moments of artistic indulgence within In Fabric, to be sure... But they’re all so bizarrely inspired that they’re oddly endearing, particularly if you’ve already got a taste for giallo-inspired strangeness.

Strickland is fully aware of the innate silliness of his premise... If you think a movie about a homicidal gown is dumb, Strickland seems to say, wait till I get you to root for the dress.