People are voting emotionally.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Henry Darger is a fascinating figure -- one of those extreme characters whose private artistic output is at the same time strange and familiar, a collection of strange obsessions born out on paper. There have probably been a lot of people pouring their anxieties into private fantasies, but none of them had quite the tenacity or strangeness of Darger.Jessica Yu's film In the Realms of the Unreal is fascinating, then, inasmuch as it's a film about a fascinating individual. Yu loosely sticks to the standard documentary format, with lots of talking heads and voice-over narration. There are some artistic touches, some of them successful (the strange animation), others of them less so (the child voice over). On the whole it's a competent documentary on the subject, if perhaps a bit overlong, but little more. In the Realms of the Unreal is probably a good introduction to Darger, but if you've already read a couple articles on him, there won't be much new there.

To say this film is good is like saying water is wet. The director has brought to the world a story everyone should not just see...but one you should pay close attention to.At the end of this film you might come away with a sense of..."what if?" By this I mean what if not a soul payed attention to me.Henry Darger was a lonely soul throughout his life. I got the impression he was lonely...by design. He couldn't deal with people because early on in his life he had such difficulties as a child that he figured why deal with real people. How bout I create my own world. This is what he did...and what he did is visually stunning and mentally stimulating. In a basic sense I mean he created some outstanding paintings and oh yeah, there are written stories to go along with each panting. The stories are beyond any Sci-fi fantasy. These are just pure make believe that he actually believed in.Pure innocence is a rarity in the world anymore. If you wanna see some, watch this film and be prepared to cry and be amazed. I know I was.Thank you Jessica Yu.

This "documentary" is a blatant attempt to contribute to and fester the 'myth' of Henry Darger, a reclusive, backward man who concocted a trite and repetitive story (18,000 pages) filled with extreme inconsistencies (his "Christian" army is involved in bloody warfare - tenets of Christ were those of a pacifist, etc) and sadomasochistic tendencies. It seems he lived in his own sullied world, formed mostly by an extreme fascination with children and the sufferings of Christ (he had upon his wall 13,000 representations of crucifixes). His landlords found his room after he died, stuffed with innumerable articles of junk, stacks of wet papers, hairballs, empty bottles and yet, being artists and entrepreneurs themselves, they hatched a theme to create Henry Darger as a genius of 'outsider art', their attempts succeeded, Darger's immature works, mostly traced drawings, slapped on with some vivid color schemata, in every sense lacking any cohesive aesthetic, have sold for millions now.The room itself was photographed, cataloged and inducted into the 'folk art' hall of fame. Darger was seemingly a lunatic, at odds with his warped Christian conditioning and society itself, he would hide in his room for hours on end, lusting after children and cut out articles and trace faces onto pieces of toilet paper (he was poor). There's no doubt that he holds some fascination for us, mainly because of his weirdness but eventually even that is usurped by the painstaking tediousness and forcefulness of accepting such unworthy levels of art into our consciousness, as this documentary begs us to do.Since he is dead, he can not speak for himself, and thus, his 'myth' is assured, bringing the curious to worship at his feet and sell his works for staggering prices.

I found the story of Henry Darger to be fascinating. The documentary style was a bit different from many I've seen. The animation of the Darger's artwork was an interesting touch and I appreciated the creativity of that choice even though I didn't always enjoy the results.I also found it interesting that for the first half of the film you never see an interview with a live person, although you are hearing from different voices. I almost wanted it to stay that way through to the end, but I do like to see who's talking.Overall, this film makes me think about how many extraordinary people are hidden just below the surface of the ordinary everyday world in which we live.I hope that I will have an opportunity to see a display of Darger's work in the future.