Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 20
  2. Negative: 1 out of 20
  1. 100
    In today's digital bog of empty light and marketing deceptions, this is what early-millennium Euro art-film masterpieces feel like--lean, qualmish, abstracted to the point of parable but as grounded as a gravedigging.
  2. Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    100
    Haneke demonstrates profound insight into the essence of human behavior when all humility is pared away, raw panic and despair are the order of the day, and man becomes more like wolf than man.
  3. There are no zombies out of ''28 Days Later'' to alleviate the slow creep of realistic doom in this chilly, tense corker.
  4. One of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since George A. Romero's 1968 zombie shocker, "Night of the Living Dead."
  5. Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    Haneke has become known as a dour modern master of cinematic pain, and in this movie he scrubs civilization down to the root level.
  6. 80
    Time of the Wolf is tough medicine, to be sure. Yet, the movie builds to a note of cautious optimism that is as stirring as it is unexpected.
  7. 80
    At its best, the film sustains the heightened tension of great science fiction, dropping in on a frightening new world that's just this side of familiar.
  8. Haneke is still a masterful director, and his authority carries this well-acted and attractively shot account of a family from an unnamed city trying to survive in the sticks after an unspecified catastrophe.
  9. This is one of Haneke's least powerful films, although the excellent cast is interesting to watch.
  10. Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.
  11. 75
    Haneke's images are so bold and riveting and the characters' emotions are so raw that the lack of a few details doesn't matter.
  12. Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    70
    Moviegoers expecting a conventional sci-fi fantasy will be disappointed; Haneke never explains the vague disaster, nor does he offer any definitive solution.
  13. Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    70
    While it's sometimes tedious viewing, the film proves the perfect complement to this year's hyper-explained "The Day After Tomorrow;" it's utterly free of cheap melodrama and visual razzle-dazzle, concentrating instead on the souls of plausibly human sufferers.
  14. You can feel frightened and disturbed by this movie without being especially moved by it.
  15. Reviewed by: Chris Wiegand
    60
    In the somewhat muted lead role, Huppert really is a marvel.
  16. More than watchable, if less than compelling.
  17. It's a much more interesting and engrossing film than its somewhat nefarious reputation may indicate -- though, granted, elements of it are very hard to take, and it finally leaves you feeling pretty down and out.
  18. Haneke leaves the future of the human race ambiguous. Or would have left it so if his allegory had worked. But the film is such a pat construction, so dingily shot in heavy light, so dependent on our cooperation without earning it, that we are more aware of the exercise than affected by it
  19. I would rather have a more interesting group of desperate people to spend my post-apocalyptic time with.
User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 5 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. PeterA.
    9
    A wonderful film, scary, moving, unexplained, inexplicable, showing us the end of civilization as we know it, but with an unexpected note of optimism and beauty at the end. Huppert is marvelous and her two children are superb. Full Review »