page_title: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter / Reception
caption_attribution_description: Sundance 2014 Awards Ceremony
context_page_description: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a 2014 American drama film co-written and directed by David Zellner. The film stars Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, and Kanako Higashi.
  The story is based on the urban legend surrounding Takako Konishi in search of the fictional ransom money seen buried in the snow from the 1996 film Fargo.
context_section_description: The film received largely positive reviews upon its premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% rating based on reviews from 128 critics, with an average score of 7.2/10. The critics consensus reads "Powerfully acted and lovely to look at, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter offers a treat for cinephiles with a taste for the pleasantly peculiar." Metacritic gives the film a score of 68 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "Generally favorable."
  Scott Foundas, in his review for Variety, gave the film a positive review by saying that "A beguiling fable of buried treasure and movie-fed obsession" and added that "At every turn, we can sense what’s going on behind Kumiko’s doleful, downcast eyes; Kikuchi pulls us deeply into her world." Todd McCarthy in his review for The Hollywood Reporter called the film "A work of rigorously disciplined eccentricity, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is at once entirely accessible and yet appealing only to a rarified crowd ready to key into its narrow-bandwidth sense of humor." Eric Kohn of Indiewire praised the film and said that "Striking a complex tone of tragedy and uplift at the same time, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter both celebrates the escapist power of personal fantasies and bears witness to their dangerous extremes. It's the rare case of a story that's inspirational and devastating at once." David Ehrlich of Film.com  gave the film 9.1 out of 10 and said that "Less of an homage to Fargo than the next appendage of the same exquisite corpse, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter plays like a dryly hilarious riff on Don't Look Now" but ultimately said that "[it's] one of the best films to ever premiere at Sundance."
caption: The Octopus Project won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the festival.
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