A Glitch in the Matrix
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: February 5, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
5
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The PlaylistChris BarsantiFeb 1, 2021
Ascher’s appropriately discombobulating stew of queasiness, comedy, and terror seems well-cued to the subject matter, even while missing a certain editorial sharpness that might have brought some of its notions into greater clarity. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnJan 31, 2021
Drawing on interviews with 10 experts and internet theorists with an endearing mashup of film clips and trippy 3-D animation, A Glitch in the Matrix adapts to the internal logic of its echo chamber until starts to sound pretty convincing on its own terms. If you’re not already one of the diehards convinced we’re living in a simulation, this movie might actually get you there. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeJan 31, 2021
Fascinating, mind-expanding, infuriating and bewildering, this is a bracingly ambitious documentary which embraces the artificiality of the computer generated animation which constitutes a large part of its approach. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeJan 31, 2021
Though it leaves some avenues underexplored and gives a bit too much attention to the sci-fi landmark name-checked in its title, the film makes for engrossing, sometimes unsettling viewing. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonFeb 25, 2021
Using movie clips, animation and news footage, Ascher creates his own alternate universe in A Glitch in the Matrix and explores phenomena such as the Mandela Effect, a real-life wonder in which masses of unconnected people claim to “remember” something that is simply not true. Read full review
75
The Film StageJohn FinkFeb 2, 2021
A Glitch in the Matrix fits well within the canon of Ascher’s pictures, which offer a kind of creepy alternative history of popular culture as interviewees work to identify hidden structures within their lives—including one who insists on organizing time in twelve-day weeks. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJan 31, 2021
Rodney Ascher is a sly master of mining potentially jokey or gimmicky subjects for the alienation they primordially express. Read full review
70
Film ThreatBradley GibsonFeb 9, 2021
A Glitch in the Matrix is timely and full of mystery and wonder, but lingering on descriptions of surreal subjective experience misses the point. This would be a much more interesting movie if it had more focus on the science of simulation theory. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayFeb 4, 2021
While the doc may be overlong, it’s consistently fascinating because of its implications. Read full review
70
IGNKristy PuchkoJan 31, 2021
A Glitch In The Matrix is a solid sibling to Room 237 and The Nightmare. Once more, Ascher offers an empathetic space to conspiracy theorists and dreamers, creating a superb setting for honesty, earnestness, and vulnerability. Employing keen editing, he illustrates their arguments with pop culture references and panache. However, he also offers the shadow of a doubt, allowing the viewer a safe space to question. Read full review
68
Paste MagazineJacob OllerFeb 3, 2021
While not compelling enough to be one of the two options—either a destructive or awakening force for our own personal simulations—winkingly proffered in the doc itself, A Glitch in the Matrix still has genuinely gripping segments. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerFeb 4, 2021
Like code that works but inefficiently, the length is both a feature and a bug. Mercifully, Ascher's most visually original movie to date keeps those TED lecture seat-shuffling blues at bay. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jan 31, 2021
A Glitch In The Matrix unfolds as a flood of exposition and conjecture, accompanied by a gaudy infotainment montage of video-game footage, movie excerpts, and computer-animated recreations. Read full review
65
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 1, 2021
It is a lot, and Ascher only has so many stylistic tricks up his sleeve – including a unique, if eventually exhausting, spin on talking-head Zoom footage – to delay the sheer weight of his subject matter from crushing his film into multiverse-ready dust. Read full review
65
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanJan 31, 2021
Ascher leaves us pondering the costs of dissociation, but also its seductive appeal. Is it really that outlandish to look around occasionally, and wonder at the surreality of it all? Read full review
63
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyFeb 3, 2021
Rodney Ascher directed Glitch. He’s best known for Room 237 (2012), an inspired look at several bizarre theories about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Glitch ups the ante on that documentary and then some. It looks at a bizarre theory about everything. The result is lively, playful, and busy — in a very good way. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comNick AllenFeb 2, 2021
A Glitch in the Matrix is so much about conveying its big idea that it misses the smaller parts—it oddly seems limited in its overall mission, documenting this mix of philosophy, sci-fi, and religion without helping us understand its believers. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 2, 2021
The documentary, like the idea behind it, makes for a fascinating thought experiment. And a few years down the road, maybe it’ll be worth revisiting to wonder if more than one interview subject has wound up in an institution. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 9, 2021
It’s a messy, mind-blowing collision of philosophy, technology, religion and fruit-loop paranoia which, while it doesn’t exactly make a watertight case, does provide a fascinating, and in one case deeply disturbing, insight into the thought processes of those who believe it. Read full review
60
The GuardianLeslie FelperinFeb 4, 2021
What’s missing from this fecund brew, which you could imagine being twice as long, is any kind of judgment or analysis of the subjects. Read full review
50
Original-CinLiam LaceyFeb 5, 2021
The film suffers from the over-interpreting mental “glitch,” eagerly connecting coincidence, mental illness, drug experiences, religious awe, computer gaming, and science fiction movies in an over-arching pattern. Read full review
40
The New York TimesGlenn KennyFeb 4, 2021
“A Glitch” wades only shin-deep into the complex logic that’s attached to this speculation. Read full review
40
SlashfilmBen PearsonFeb 1, 2021
A Glitch in the Matrix is more than just a conspiracy theory movie: it’s about how we function in a societal system, how we interact with other people, and what happens when we embrace a worldview which seemingly offers answers to things in life that don’t make sense to us. But the movie stumbles over its muddled execution of some of those ideas, and as a result, can’t help but feel like a letdown. Read full review
30
Screen RantDebopriyaa DuttaMar 12, 2021
Although based on an intriguing philosophical conundrum, A Glitch in the Matrix feels unreal on all fronts, poorly-researched, out of touch and vapid. Read full review
20
CineVueChristopher MachellFeb 15, 2021
A Glitch in the Matrix’s incuriosity and unstructured approach to its material at best mirror its subjects’ modes of thinking; at worst, it is little more than a voyeuristic freak show. Read full review
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