Although many critics seemed enchanted with the premise of “Fingernails” – Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com praised its “quiet soulfulness” while Alissa Wilkinson of Vox called it “funny and ultimately heartwrenching” — they seemed less sold on the ending of the film. Todd McCarthy of Deadline was disturbed by the more gruesome aspects of the film (and particularly the finale), referring to it as “robustly repellent” and writing that its ending “will likely prove edifying, appealing and/or interesting to about 0.10 percent of the audience. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s revolting.”
Maureen Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly was thrown off by how much “Fingernails” relies on the grotesque, summing up her qualms about its narrative choices by saying, “The film is undercut by its use of body horror, needlessly depicting the fingernail removal process multiple times. Its discomfort feels deliberate, but it goes too far, which only serves to reduce the emotional impact overall as it begins to feel gross and silly, rather than profound.”
Still, not all critics were equally repelled. Guy Lodge of Variety found its elements of body horror ultimately bolstered the narrative, writing of the fingernail-pulling, “It’s a small, malevolently grisly body-horror detail in a film otherwise given to tender expressions of philosophy and feeling, and a shock of the visceral that draws attention to how disembodied this social ideal of romance appears to be.”
