Metacritic Film

Time of the Wolf, The

Starring Isabelle Huppert, Béatrice Dalle, Patrice Chéreau, Rona Hartner, Maurice Bénichou, Olivier Gourmet, Brigitte Roüan, and Lucas Biscombe

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Palm Pictures
Drama  |  Foreign
114 minutes | Color
France / Austria / Germany
Released In Theaters June 25, 2004

An apocalyptic calamity has left the people of Europe struggling to survive amidst drastic shortages of food and water. A couple decides to flee the city to their country house with what meager supplies they can find in hopes of protecting their children. To their surprise and horror they find the house already occupied by another equally desperate family. The ensuing confrontation forever changes their -- setting them adrift in a chaotic, often indifferent world in which their survival hinges on the strained compassion of those they encounter. (Palm Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Michael Haneke

DIRECTED BY
Michael Haneke

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

71 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Variety
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.
100 Village Voice
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.
91 Entertainment Weekly
There are no zombies out of ''28 Days Later'' to alleviate the slow creep of realistic doom in this chilly, tense corker.
90 Los Angeles Times
One of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since George A. Romero's 1968 zombie shocker, "Night of the Living Dead."
88 Boston Globe
Haneke has become known as a dour modern master of cinematic pain, and in this movie he scrubs civilization down to the root level.
80 Chicago Reader
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.
80 The Onion (A.V. Club)
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.
80 LA Weekly
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.
75 San Francisco Chronicle
Nightmare-inducing.
75 New York Daily News
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.
75 New York Post
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.
75 Christian Science Monitor
This is one of Haneke's least powerful films, although the excellent cast is interesting to watch.
70 The New York Times
You can feel frightened and disturbed by this movie without being especially moved by it.
70 TV Guide
Moviegoers expecting a conventional sci-fi fantasy will be disappointed; Haneke never explains the vague disaster, nor does he offer any definitive solution.
70 Dallas Observer Staff (Not credited)
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.
60 Washington Post
More than watchable, if less than compelling.
60 Film Threat Chris Wiegand
In the somewhat muted lead role, Huppert really is a marvel.
50 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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.
40 The New Republic
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
30 Washington Post
I would rather have a more interesting group of desperate people to spend my post-apocalyptic time with.

CLOSE THIS WINDOW

©2009 CNET Networks Inc. All rights reserved.