80
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinIt is one of the year’s very best films, a great, rumbling thunderclap of genius.
- Director Peter Strickland brilliantly ratchets up the tension without showing a single frame of the grisly film.
- 100The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawUtterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a musique concrète nightmare, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good.
- 91The PlaylistOliver LytteltonThe PlaylistOliver LytteltonStrickland' command of tone, aided by Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" editor Chris Dickens and, of course, sonic wizards Joakim Sundstrom and Steve Haywood, is masterful, jarring and discombobulating the viewer as Gilderoy's mind unravels.
- 88Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenOn the surface, Peter Strickland's film is an amusing black comedy that parodies the horror movie's continual status as the cultural black sheep of the cinematic landscape, but the filmmaker is most prominently concerned with painting a sonic portrait of alienation.
- 80EmpireDavid HughesEmpireDavid HughesWith a debut film, Katalin Varga, shot entirely in Hungarian, Strickland isn't one for the easy option. This excellent follow-up plunges into equally unusual terrain with similarly pleasing results
- 80Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonTime Out LondonTom HuddlestonBerberian Sound Studio is like nothing before – and whether or not it ‘works’ seems almost irrelevant. In this era of cookie-cutter cinema, Strickland’s deeply personal moral and stylistic vision deserves the highest praise.
- 80Total FilmJamie GrahamTotal FilmJamie GrahamStrickland’s nuanced, atmospheric, ambiguous movie transcends genre.