The first Lewton thriller is still the definitive one, for the way it locates horror in the unseen—not only on the level of technique, with its suggestive shadows and offscreen sonic shocks, or of psychology, with its Freudian sublimations, but in the nuances of social relations. Irena (Simone Simon), a Serbian immigrant in New York, yearns for companionship but fears that a lover's kiss will activate an ancestral curse, awakening evil instincts within her. “I like the dark, it's friendly,” she tells her suitor Oliver (Kent Smith), in her apartment near the zoo; Oliver is friendly too, but he's a creature of daylight, and naturally cleaves to others of his kind, like office confidante Alice (Jane Randolph). While sexual jealousy escalates the plot (with “help” from a condescending and lecherous shrink), the conflict between Irena's unassimilated imagination and the amiable ordinariness of Oliver and Alice is at the heart of the film's tragedy. Lewton is compassionate toward both the alien and the Americans: one woman's tragedy is another's happy ending.
—Juliet Clark