In Safe, Carol White manifests an escalating illness out of thin air.
First the chilly interior of her mansion makes her sneeze; then an errand run on the freeway closes her windpipe; then a perm sends her to the hospital. By the end of the movie, a faux-supportive hug from her restless husband nearly pushes her off her feet -- perhaps because of his cologne? He isn't wearing any.
Directed by Todd Haynes, produced by Christine Vachon, and starring Julianne Moore as Carol, Safe is a mid-'90s near-Hollywood powerhouse, which did much to solidify the careers of all three. A rigorous and intentionally baffling study, Safe suggests a kind of post-apocalyptic body horror, ruthlessly reframed as an '80s psychological thriller. Though made in 1995, Safe is set a crucial eight years earlier, in 1987: Jane Fonda workouts, hairspray, and consumer maximalism, all filtered through fin de siècle dissociation.
Not for the first time, the faceless expanses of Los Angeles are presented as an unfamiliar and unfriendly waste zone. Ed Tomney's rich synth score tells us in no uncertain terms: we are in a land of nightmares. Moore's wan face, which seems to become paler and more translucent as the film goes on, confirms it: Being alive, for no clinical reason anyone can find, is killing Carol.
Even in her better moments, it's hard to entirely believe that Carol is alive. She moves through her opulent life -- husband Greg (Xander Berkeley, from another great 1990s apocalyptic Los Angeles movie, Terminator 2), is a dealmaker, their home full of exasperated servants -- like a ghost who can't stop apologizing for still hanging around the place.
Moore brings a light, feathery voice to the character -- she would try an even more elaborate version of the same affect for Haynes in May December -- and Carol seems to need to say "I'm sorry," or something like it, in one out of every three words she utters. She's an almost maddeningly inactive character, built to dare the audience to bring their own experience and ideas to her predicament.
A key image in the film involves women, isolated in a porcelain igloo sick house (!), confronting themselves in the mirror. When Carol does it towards the end of the film, she seems to stare directly at us; we are her mirror just as she is ours. Carol is so humorless and unadroit that I found myself reflecting on whether it's Carol's catastrophic lack of an inner life, her seeming complete immunity to imagination, curiosity, or even basic critical thinking, that is making her sick. But maybe I was only thinking about myself.
By refusing to even suggest a skeleton key to Carol's ailment, Safe defies easy analogy. It glances at the AIDS epidemic or a broader, late-20th century uneasiness (a sales flyer, listing symptoms, hops joylessly from "Do you smell fumes?" to "Are you allergic to the 20th century?").
Looking at the film in 2026, though, those time-specific lenses have moved further away, and the picture seems to suggest a more permanent, existential malaise. It would pair well with David Cronenberg's Crash, another mid-'90s near-Hollywood brooder about people snared in the technological nihilism we've built for ourselves, with nothing but their flesh and their minds, both inescapable and both inadequate.
This month's re-release of Safe by the Criterion Collection refreshes their 2014 Blu-ray with a new 4K transfer, supervised by Haynes. All of the features carry over from that release: a 2001 audio commentary by Haynes, Vachon, and Moore; a new (for 2014) conversation between Haynes and Moore; a separate interview with Vachon; and Haynes' 1978 short film, The Suicide.
The picture quality is superb, and Haynes and cinematographer Alex Nepomniaschy's clinically precise framing hold up to detailed scrutiny. As rewarding as Safe is, I can't say I'm thrilled to add it to my collection, though: it's too uncanny, too unsettling, more so now than when it was made. Everything it tells us about ourselves has only gotten sicker in the time since.
The film is now available from The Criterion Collection on a 4K+Blu-ray two-disc edition, as well as a separate Blu-ray edition.