The Act of Killing
Drafthouse Films | Release Date: July 19, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
91
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
2
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVuePatrick GambleJan 9, 2019
Endlessly thought-provoking, the disturbing nature of this quite incredible work cultivates a long-lasting sense of unease in the viewer and achieves what all good documentaries aim to do – it remains firmly lodged in you mind and refuses to loose its terrible grip. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJan 9, 2019
Part historical document, part character portrait and part art project, The Act of Killing ultimately registers as something altogether more powerful: an exorcism. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianMarc MohanSep 13, 2013
The Act of Killing is exemplary as a history lesson, a character study and a powerful argument for confronting the past. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 15, 2013
In The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesBill StametsAug 15, 2013
[A] stunning “documentary of the imagination." Read full review
100
Boston GlobeJanice PageAug 3, 2013
The Act of Killing is one of the most extraordinary films you’ll ever encounter, not to mention one of the craziest filmmaking concepts anywhere. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayJul 26, 2013
The Act of Killing is a must-see. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJul 25, 2013
It's a mind-bending film, devastating and disorienting, that disturbs us in ways we're not used to being disturbed, raising questions about the nature of documentary, the persistence of evil, and the intertwined ways movies function in our culture and in our minds. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 25, 2013
This feature-length documentary, currently entering national release, may be one of the most horrifying films you'll ever see, and one of the most edifying. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSteven BooneJul 19, 2013
This masterpiece about propaganda, cinema and vanity as instruments of power and terror ends on an excruciatingly sustained, righteous money shot: a monster who could have been a good man suffocates on the truth. Read full review
100
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeJul 18, 2013
The cumulative impact is devastating, and very far from a simple Western condemnation of another country’s brutality. In forcing viewers to hear the boasts of genocide’s perpetrators, The Act of Killing puts a harsh spotlight on all celebrations of bloodshed, from Hollywood to the op-ed pages. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensJul 18, 2013
Among the most profound, formally complex, and emotionally overpowering documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s also, by turns and sometimes at once, luridly seductive and darkly comic and physically revolting — a movie that makes you want to laugh and cry and retch and run out of the theater, both to escape the awful things the film is showing you and to tell everyone you know that they need to see it, too. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 18, 2013
The horror of The Act of Killing does not dissipate easily or yield to anything like clarity. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJul 17, 2013
By tackling one man’s sense of right and wrong (or lack thereof), Oppenheimer is ultimately tackling human nature. Read full review
100
Village VoiceNick SchagerJul 16, 2013
More terrifying than any horror film, and more intellectually adventurous than just about any 2013 release so far, The Act of Killing is a major achievement, a work about genocide that rightly earns its place alongside Shoah as a supreme testament to the cinema's capacity for inquiry, confrontation, and remembrance. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangMar 18, 2013
Presenting a terrifying view of a hidden holocaust and a moral apocalypse in which the most basic humanities have become twisted beyond recognition, The Act of Killing is a towering achievement in filmmaking, documentary or otherwise. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 18, 2013
It is a gut-churning film: and a radical dive into history, grabbing the past in a way a conventional documentary would not. Read full review
91
The Film StageBill GrahamJan 9, 2019
One of the most dark and emotionally deafening documentaries I’ve ever witnessed, there’s no easy way to comprehend The Act of Killing’s total impact and how affecting it truly is. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMar 18, 2013
Playing make believe with murderers, Oppenheimer risks the possibility of empowering them. However, by humanizing psychopathic behavior, The Act of Killing is unparalleled in its unsettling perspective on the dementias associated with dictatorial extremes. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 1, 2013
The Act of Killing is a horrifying film, a surreal experience that explores the limits of human cruelty. It’s a film that is absolutely hard to watch. It’s also a film that absolutely should be seen. Read full review
90
NPRBob MondelloJul 19, 2013
Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer is obviously treading on dicey moral ground here, empowering killers to tell their story when they've never been called to account for the barbarism that brought them to power. Read full review
90
The DissolveNoel MurrayJul 17, 2013
The Act Of Killing raises all kinds of provocative questions about the sins of nations in transition, and about how important it is for those in power to control the narrative. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 15, 2013
The resulting film is bizarre to the point of ­trippiness, yet it’s one of the most lucid portraits of evil I’ve ever seen. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 7, 2013
It comes as little surprise that Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, both masters of sly documentaries in which the subjects nail themselves with their own words, are the executive producers of Oppenheimer’s film. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerMar 18, 2013
In Joshua Oppenheimer's extraordinary The Act of Killing, film becomes the medium for a bold historical reckoning--and in more ways than one. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichJul 16, 2013
Fortunately, Oppenheimer keeps the film focused on the highly complicated Anwar — a charismatic devil if ever there was one — observing as this strange reckoning with the past slowly breaks down his defenses. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyJul 3, 2013
You’ve never seen a documentary like The Act of Killing. If you saw too many like it, your hold on sanity might fray, which is not so much the film’s fault as that of its bloodcurdling subject. This movie is essential. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeMar 18, 2013
Never before has anyone made a documentary like The Act of Killing, and the filmmakers seem at a loss in terms of how to organize the many threads of what they capture...Still, essential and enraging, The Act of Killing is a film that begs to be seen, then never watched again. Read full review
79
Film.comMatt PatchesJul 16, 2013
The most gut-wrenching 'making of' documentary ever made. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJul 15, 2013
The project gave me pause. Although Oppenheimer has called it “a documentary of the imagination,” whatever that means, would a measure of investigation have spoiled it? We hear that Congo personally exterminated a thousand people. Does that figure stand up, and does it not matter more than his dawning remorse? There is no disputing that we are right at the heart of darkness, but around it is a larger body of evidence, which awaits another explorer. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 16, 2013
It's also a touch tedious at times, as it's not always clear where Oppenheimer is going. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 18, 2013
Can’t-look-away stuff, though it’s tough to believe your eyes and ears. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 26, 2013
The effect is intended to be ghastly – which it certainly is – but I was equally repelled by this film’s conceit. Oppenheimer allows murderous thugs free rein to preen their atrocities, and then fobs it all off as some kind of exalted art thing. This is more than an aesthetic crime; it’s a moral crime. Read full review
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