Sightlines · reception

How Evolution was received

2016 · Lucile Hadžihalilović · Evolution on Sightlines

The arc

It premiered at TIFF 2015 to admiring but puzzled notices and took home the Special Jury Prize and Best Cinematography at San Sebastián; since then it's quietly climbed from festival curio to fixture on best-of-decade art-horror lists, helped by Hadžihalilović's rising profile after Earwig.

What’s debated

The perennial split: is its refusal to explain anything hypnotic world-building or arthouse obfuscation — gorgeous dread, fans say, while detractors call it a mood board in search of a movie.

Its footprint

Its images — pale boys on black volcanic sand, a red starfish, a village of identical women — circulate constantly in 'horror under the sun' and aquatic-horror lists, making it a go-to comparison point whenever a new oceanic art-horror film surfaces.

Where it stands

A certified Letterboxd deep-cut: the 'if you liked Under the Skin' recommendation that marks you as someone who's done the art-horror homework.

Did you know? Eleven years passed between Hadžihalilović's debut Innocence (2004) and Evolution — not by choice, but because financing a near-dialogue-free, star-free body-horror film about children proved brutally difficult.

Named by the director

• Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) — Hadžihalilović cited Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's film for its mood of horror in bright sunlight and its unsettling village of children.
• Eraserhead (1977) — She named Lynch's debut as an influence for its quality of 'organic nightmare.'
• H.P. Lovecraft — She said reading Lovecraft as a teenager marked her deeply, citing his sense of bodily metamorphosis and the birth of a new being.