---
title: "Repulsion (1965) review"
description: "I did a “women be crazy” double feature with Possession, watching both back-to-back in my living room. Except calling it that feels wrong after actually..."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/repulsion/
---

![A still from Repulsion (1965)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/repulsion/backdrop.webp)

# Repulsion (1965)

Oct 26, 2025 | 2 min read | Rated 4 out of 5 | Dir. Roman Polanski

I did a “women be crazy” double feature with Possession, watching both back-to-back in my living room. Except calling it that feels wrong after actually watching these films, because both are really about why women should be terrified of men.

Which brings me to the deeply uncomfortable reality of Repulsion: Roman Polanski, a man who would later plead guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl and flee the country to avoid sentencing, made one of cinema’s most effective films about women’s justified fear and repulsion toward male predation. The irony is sickening. Watching this film knowing what Polanski would go on to do makes every scene of men invading Carol’s space, touching her without consent, forcing themselves into her life feel even more nauseating. He understood male predation intimately because he was a predator. He captured the revulsion women feel toward aggressive male sexuality so well because he was the exact kind of man women should fear.

Catherine Deneuve’s performance is incredible - she disappears into Carol’s unraveling psyche completely. I struggled to get on the wavelength of this film initially, similar to my experience with Possession. It takes a while to get going, and the pacing in the first half feels slow and observational. But it really clicked for me in the second half, especially when the dream sequences started kicking in. That’s when I understood why this is one of the most highly acclaimed horror films of all time. The walls becoming flesh, the hands reaching out, the apartment becoming a physical manifestation of Carol’s psychological horror - it’s masterful filmmaking in service of depicting a woman’s complete mental breakdown under the weight of male violence and violation.

The film works because Polanski does genuinely capture something true about how oppressive and threatening male attention can be to women. Every man in Carol’s orbit is pushy, entitled, physically aggressive. They don’t listen when she says no. They touch her without permission. They force their way into her space. The film understands that Carol’s descent into madness is triggered by inescapable male predation - and that’s the most disturbing part about Polanski directing this. He knew exactly what he was depicting because he was capable of it himself.

One thing I need to note about the soundtrack: it’s hilarious to me that 1960s films always have these bossa nova jazz soundtracks that are wildly out of place with what modern cinema and horror films do today. Every single time Carol was walking around the streets of London and that bossa nova music kicked in, I just thought of Austin Powers. It’s so jarring and almost comical against the darkness of what’s happening.

This is a masterpiece of psychological horror. It’s also impossible to watch without thinking about who made it and what he did. Both things can be true, but the second fact makes the first one feel deeply tainted

Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/repulsion/)

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