Andrew Sarris

“For once, Geneviève Bujold is ideally cast. She seems dedicated enough to go outside official channels in search of the truth, and demented enough to arouse doubts about her sanity among the very people who might help her. In fact, it is 50-50 whether the wild look in her eyes is attributable to persecution or paranoia…. [O]ne wonders why a suspicious physician in what purports to be a Boston hospital does not simply ring up a local muck raking publication like The Phoenix or The Real Paper and spill the beans.

“Instead, she confronts all the menacing hirelings of a high-level medical conspiracy single-handedly. She climbs steep ladders that would afflict me with vertigo 10 times over, and, in the process, she very symbolically removes her pantyhose to facilitate her progress. As the discarded pantyhose drift downward one senses that a new feminist spirit is rising upward in compensation. No more female frippery for an unencumbered creature who can hold her own in pluck, ingenuity, and ruthlessness with the most vicious villains, even in the icy confines of a morgue.

“Gradually the message becomes manifest: Our heroine shall prevail against all odds… [W]e know her survival is guaranteed by the zeitgeist….

“…. [T]here is never in Coma any foundation of normality on which to build a tower of terror. The movie is gothic from the word go, and, fortunately, Geneviève Bujold, as a dominating female protagonist, is spunky and zesty enough to make the whole enterprise work as harmless escapist entertainment.”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice, February 13, 1978