On a morning like any other, Elisabeth's lethargic, desperate routine starts interacting and connecting with the religious visions and the bloody nightmares of a silent and mysterious eel-hatchery worker.
When a suicide sets off a series of violent events in the local community, secrets long-hidden in the swamps begin to resurface, leading to a lethal confrontation of the two women with all their suppressors.
[13] The Hollywood Reporter and Screen International praised the film for its direction, imagery and the committed performances of Angeliki Papoulia and Youla Boudali, while criticising elements of the script's narrative construction and pace.
[14][15] Guy Lodge in Variety wrote that "“A Blast director Syllas Tzoumerkas returns with an agitated, atmospheric and sometimes confounding exercise in modern Greek tragedy.
Tzoumerkas’ latest invites comparisons to the loopier, trash-skirting genre outings of Herzog or Lynch, with the gradual unpeeling of layered madness and corruption in the sleepy working town of Missolonghi occasionally calling to mind an aggressively sunburned Twin Peaks".
Pacifying all forms of life under the flag of future deliverance, the promise that each being will attain their most perfect form and self, The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea provides a convergence between religious submission and humanistic agency.”[17][18] Victoria Ferguson in the Upcoming gave the film a 3/5 review, praising the cinematography by Petrus Sjövik and "its close shots that capture the inner angst of the characters" and calling The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea visually compelling, and 'a show of great creative ambition from Tzoumerkas.”[19] Italian critic Massimo Lechi wrote in Il Ragazzo Selvaggio magazine that “The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea, set in the inhospitable surroundings of a sun-parched Missolonghi, is a metaphysical thriller loaded with biblical references, an unsettling and disturbing meditation on the concept of paradise featuring two women in profound existential crisis: Elisabeth, (a master Angeliki Papoulia) a disgraced policewoman confined in the province by her superiors following an unfortunate anti-terrorist operation; and Rita (the brave Youla Boudali, also co-screenwriter), a painful figure of a martyr besieged by visions of a mystical background.