I still don’t know how a gore-meister like Park Chan-wook could have made the year’s most irresistible romance. Maybe it’s that he hates oppression — chauvinist, colonialist, Sadean — so deeply that in hoisting his old boys on their own petards, he has discovered the wellsprings of love.

David Edelstein

New York Magazine (Vulture)

The Handmaiden is film at its most exhilarating by a director at the height of his powers, and it’s the kind of singular rarity that must be savored when it comes around.

The nearly three-hour runtime, though, may be one of the film's biggest hurdles. But the time seems necessary for a story that adds more layers the further we're taken down the rabbit hole.

Edward Douglas

New York Daily News