Beyond the Hills
Sundance Selects | Release Date: March 8, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
1
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 7, 2013
Even as Mr. Mungiu maintains a detached, objective point of view, allowing the details of the story to speak for themselves, he also allows you to glimpse the complex and volatile inner lives of his characters. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 6, 2013
Beyond The Hills has a rich understanding of the appeals and perils of religious values that provide structure and meaning to some while seeming cruel and irrational to outsiders. It’s a world within a world, and Mungiu peers from a clear window. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 4, 2013
This is not an anti-religious polemic, though it easily could have gone that way. Instead it is a much more thoughtful film and in some ways more troubling. No one is trying to do the wrong thing here, but, as with most things in life, it becomes increasingly hard to know what the right thing might be. Read full review
90
Village VoiceScott FoundasMar 5, 2013
The haunting final image suggests how quickly such stories can be lost...which makes Beyond the Hills, above all else, a powerful and necessary act of reclamation. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 4, 2013
It’s a deceptively impersonal style, because Beyond the Hills seethes with astonishment and rage at a broken society marooned between the 21st century and the 16th. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 14, 2013
Of all the movies culminating in a rite of exorcism, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's remarkable Beyond the Hills stands alone. Read full review
88
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeMar 7, 2013
What this means is that at times the pace of Beyond the Hills is nerve-wrackingly slow. But Mungiu has his own way of creating suspense, and he has a gift for making a known outcome as shocking as a twist. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesSteven BooneMar 7, 2013
Beyond the Hills is an arthouse film from Romania, yet, in its slow, lurching progress toward a tragic exorcism, it is a stylistic nephew of America's "The Exorcist." Read full review
88
Slant MagazineMar 1, 2013
It's Cristian Mungiu's staging and compositional skill that lends the material its true sense of dawning dread. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianStan HallApr 4, 2013
Beyond the Hills is an undeniably difficult (not to mention lengthy) film to endure. But for those with the fortitude, there is grace and enlightenment hidden in this harsh Romanian winter tale. Read full review
83
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthFeb 21, 2013
Deceivingly complex, with an emotional center that peels away like an onion the longer it unfolds, this is a powerful effort from Mungiu in which love and faith are both different kinds of poison. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 14, 2013
It's tempting to see Beyond the Hills solely as an indictment of religion, but the film is more ambitious than that. Ignorance and superstition aren't confined to the convent; people in town, including the cops, drop casual references to witchcraft as if it were part of everyday life. The broader subject is possession by primitive ideas. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid ParkinsonMar 11, 2013
A bruising psychodrama from the Palme d'Or winner that taps into the dark heart of central European superstition. Read full review
80
TimeMary PolsMar 10, 2013
Beyond the Hills may be the best movie no one will want to see in 2013. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensMar 10, 2013
Based on a horrifying real-life case that took place in the Moldavia region of Romania in 2005, Beyond the Hills can be seen as both a critique of patriarchal religious systems and an allegory about the tension between secularism and faith (as well as a precisely and painfully observed portrait of one particular friendship). Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 7, 2013
Strangest of all, we go along with it in a sort of dream, scarcely pausing to complain, so expert is Mungiu at drawing us into the fold of these passionate souls. [8 March 2013, p.80]
80
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenMar 7, 2013
With its long takes and deliberate pacing, Beyond the Hills is demanding but always engrossing, even during its repetitive middle section. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierMar 7, 2013
The deliberate pace Mungiu employs in this incredible work is so engrossing and quietly heartbreaking that its philosophical ending may come as a shock. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichMar 5, 2013
As in his much-lauded "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," the latest feature from Palme d’Or–winning filmmaker Cristian Mungiu takes a rigorous approach to the material. But where the previous film — about two women seeking a back-alley abortion — was a reductively dour slog, Beyond the Hills feels more caustically all-encompassing. Read full review
80
Total FilmTom DawsonMar 1, 2013
Arduous yet always absorbing, Cristian Mungiu’s first full-length feature since 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is inspired by a real-life case of a tragically botched exorcism in rural Romania. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 21, 2013
Enthralling, mysterious and intimately upsetting – a terrible demonstration of how poverty creates a space which irrational fear must fill. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 4, 2013
It’s an enigmatic and austere film from a region where political, sexual and religious repression are as stifling as the sooty air. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 4, 2013
Based on reports of a real 2005 incident, it is a film that asks its viewer to consider the nature of good and evil, love and trust - and trust that turns into something like blind faith. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenMar 28, 2013
If you long for the bleak intelligence of an Ingmar Bergman film, where humankind is deeply flawed and God is indifferently silent and the landscape is cloaked in perpetual winter, then Beyond the Hills promises to be your cup of despair. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoMar 18, 2013
The movie deals with themes of secular and religious love, of how they may intersect and diverge, that are suggestive of Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 14, 2013
The filmmaker’s dedication to non-judgment occasionally militates against narrative drive: Beyond the Hills begins to sag in its middle sequences, when the repetitive monotony of Alina’s outbursts begins to yield diminishing returns. But he has made a film that’s worth even those wearying sequence. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 8, 2013
It has moments when the spiritual and the secular burst forth in stunning disarray. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 7, 2013
Exorcist junkies should look elsewhere. Instead of spinning heads and projectile puke, Mungiu offers nuance and provocation. The result is quietly devastating. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 21, 2013
Mungiu's method creates the feeling of being submerged in a maze of confrontations and chatter, but the build-up gets so tiring that the concluding scenes come as a relief instead of a payoff. Read full review
70
NPRMark JenkinsMar 8, 2013
Ultimately, the bleak universe conjured by Beyond the Hills is more compelling than what happens in it. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonFeb 21, 2013
Beyond the Hills is less fun than any film about lesbian nuns and their psychotic ex-lovers ought to be. But it is an engrossingly serious work, and confirms Mungiu as a maturing talent with more universal stories to tell than those defined by Romania’s recent political past. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin ChangFeb 21, 2013
Observing the situation at an icy remove, Beyond the Hills never builds the palpable menace and pressure-cooker anxiety of "4 Months," and its dramatic progression feels obvious, even predictable, by comparison. Read full review
25
Film.comEric D. SniderMar 3, 2013
Assisted by passionless central performances and dull dialogue, Mungiu succeeds only in exhausting our patience, not in conveying a message. Read full review
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