Taika Waititi Has a Halloween Message for ‘Klara and the Sun’ Critics

Few book-to-screen adaptations arrive with as much baggage as ‘Klara and the Sun’. Jenna Ortega plays Ishiguro’s solar-powered Artificial Friend in a film Sony held for more than two years. That is a long wait for a movie that was always going to be measured against a beloved novel.

When it finally surfaced, the reception was rough. The film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and opened at 25% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on its first 12 reviews. By October 17, that score had slipped to 20%, the lowest of Waititi’s directorial career.

Now the director has responded, and he is not being gentle. Variety reports that Waititi lashed out at the film’s critics, calling them “sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists.” He said he hasn’t read a review aimed at himself or his peers in almost 15 years, but that he does listen to the people.

He didn’t stop there. Waititi added that these same critics also hated ‘Jojo Rabbit,’ and he labeled them irrelevant, out of touch and obsolete. The final jab was a blunt “in the bin,” delivered with a Halloween twist that gave the whole rant a tongue-in-cheek, trick-or-treat framing.

The ‘Jojo Rabbit’ reference is a deliberate callback. Waititi is an Academy Award winner for that film, and invoking it is his way of arguing that critics have been wrong about him before. Whether that comparison holds up is another matter entirely.

The notices he is pushing back against were hardly subtle. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film one star, and The Hollywood Reporter reportedly called it a “wretched mess” while The Telegraph went with “mind-meltingly dreadful”. The Boston Globe was equally unimpressed, calling it a jarringly bad adaptation and saying Ortega gave a committed performance that barely survives the material.

Not every critic joined the pile-on. David Calhoun of Screen Daily gave it a fresh review, praising its “strong performances and imaginative visuals” and calling it “an engaging fairytale”, though he admitted something is lost by moving away from Klara’s perspective. That split is worth noting, since the loudest complaint from many reviewers has been about tone. Most critics felt Waititi’s playful style clashed with the sad tone of Ishiguro’s book.

Waititi has also pushed back on the tonal criticism before the film even opened. In a Variety interview, he spoke about not wanting to mess with the tone too much while still making the story his own. Critics clearly weren’t convinced he struck that balance.

Audiences haven’t exactly rushed to his defense either. Variety reported that the film missed the top 10 in its Australian box office debut. That is a notable stumble in a territory close to Waititi’s New Zealand roots, and the film was shot in his home country alongside longtime collaborators.

The timing adds another layer. The reviews follow a run of critical stumbles that began with ‘Thor: Love and Thunder,’ and his sports drama ‘Next Goal Wins’ also divided critics. For a filmmaker whose name once guaranteed goodwill, the conversation around him has shifted.

Whether his Halloween broadside wins anyone over is doubtful. Calling critics failed artists is a bold strategy, and it is likely to fuel more debate than sympathy. Still, Waititi has never been a filmmaker who backs down quietly, and ‘Klara and the Sun’ now has a second storyline playing out off screen.