Burning
Well Go USA Entertainment | Release Date: October 26, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
91
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
37
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Little White LiesTrevor JohnstonFeb 14, 2022
It’s gripping in the moment, but with plenty to take away for afterwards. Genius really isn’t too strong a word. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 3, 2019
It’s chilling and brilliant. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 14, 2018
Burning, from South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, is a beautifully cryptic slow burner that lingers long in the senses. It’s the kind of film where you obsess over what it means, the better to avoid thinking about how it makes you feel. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyNov 1, 2018
Behind the shell game of motives between the three main characters, there are subtle perceptions about class, youth alienation, and disposable people in contemporary Korea. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 1, 2018
The whole film feels magical in the way it gets at intangible, invisible, ineffable things without naming them, and tells a gripping story of obsession at a poet’s pace, without need of conventional explanations. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyOct 26, 2018
It's a great film, engrossing, suspenseful, and strange. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 25, 2018
While each event expands the narrative — filling in the larger picture with nods at sexual relations, class divisions and a riven people — they don’t necessarily explain what happens or answer the fundamental question that burns through this brilliant movie. Read full review
100
SlateInkoo KangOct 25, 2018
As Burning unfolds, it reveals new thematic layers until the film brims with allegorical potential. Read full review
100
Film ThreatMalik AdanOct 6, 2018
Like a brooding nightmare, Burning washes over audiences with passing visions of multiple lives, secrets and betrayals, all leading to no single, clean-cut or simple explanation. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJordan RuimyMay 21, 2018
Simmering with ambiguity, Burning plays its staging, writing, dialogue, acting, music, everything with carefully calibrated minimalism, but in turn it makes some grandiose statements. An unrecognizable murder-mystery Burning torches genre clichés and leaves a lasting, scorching blister. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 18, 2018
Burning is a character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 17, 2018
This is Lee’s closest ever film to a thriller, but it defies expectations, offering multiple, murky solutions to a set of mysteries at once. Read full review
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 17, 2018
Once again, Lee has crafted a film of wondrous complexity and inscrutability. The more we see in Burning, the less sure we are of what we are watching. Read full review
100
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 17, 2018
The degree to which Burning succeeds will depend largely on one’s capacity to identify with the unspoken but strongly conveyed sense of jealousy and frustration its lower-class protagonist feels, coupled with a need to impose some sense of order on events beyond our control. Read full review
91
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerOct 31, 2018
This is despairing filmmaking, but also the kind that arrests the eye from its first moments. Lee has made something rare here: a portrait of poverty that treats its subjects not as victims or as aggressors, but simply as pawns of a far grander social scheme than any of them can possibly comprehend. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeOct 4, 2018
Burning actually justifies its running time by slowly building paranoid atmosphere before an explosive, hauntingly ambiguous finale. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 17, 2018
Burning simmers. For nearly two-and-a-half perfectly measured hours, it turns up the heat without boiling over: a drama becoming a thriller in slow motion, intensifying little by little minute by minute, until finally it reaches a shocking, powerful crescendo. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 17, 2018
Burning keeps twisting back on itself, charting the path of a man waking up to the world, only to find that it won’t stop messing with him. Read full review
90
The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 26, 2018
A meditative two-and-a-half-hour art film might not sound like a plausible candidate for the year’s best thriller, but Burning is exactly that—its story moves patiently, but engrossingly, before cresting with a shocking denouement that wouldn’t make sense were it not for Lee’s meticulous craft. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 24, 2018
This stunning, slow-build thriller from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong sizzles with a cumulative power that will knock the wind out of you. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 17, 2018
This is a beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice and revenge. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineChad BetzDec 11, 2018
Thought the harmony between Lee’s film and Murakami’s text, even as different as they are, is something of a paradox—Lee makes notable changes to the protagonist; fleshes out Murakami’s story to create the film’s first two acts, adding a powerful third—Burning belies the notion that auteurs in different mediums can’t fully co-exist in the same work. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfNov 8, 2018
With Burning Lee has molded a psychological masterpiece that will leave you full of doubt, dread, and searing questions about morality. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 29, 2018
A languorous, catlike psychological puzzle from one of the essential international masters, Lee Chang-dong. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 28, 2018
There is a soft sadness that permeates the film and steadily spreads, until it gradually devours each of the main characters. It may devour you. Read full review
88
Washington PostSonia RaoNov 7, 2018
Lee plays the actors off one another to create a compelling exploration of human nature. South Korea’s official Oscar submission, Burning culminates in a finale so astonishing that it will sear itself into viewers’ memories for years to come. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleOct 31, 2018
Like Haemi’s melancholy dance in the half-light, Lee has beautifully, wrenchingly summoned an unshakeable sense of disquiet. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineNiles SchwartzSep 10, 2018
With Burning, Lee Chang-dong extraordinarily obliterates the bifurcation between life and representation, the thing in itself and the metaphor. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 8, 2018
As it dips into murder-mystery territory, then something more quiet and philosophical, Chang-dong writes a story both expected and surprising. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 26, 2018
It builds slowly, and, at almost 2-1/2 hours, it occasionally drags. But it’s worth the time. This is a very knowing movie about the ultimate unknowability of people. Read full review
83
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 17, 2018
Burning might not have a huge amount going on below its gorgeous surface, but it drags the viewer along with all the seductive intrigue of a frothy page-turner. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerJan 28, 2019
Slow and difficult to get a hold on, Burning emerges as a brilliantly made one-off; puzzling, intelligent and ultimately mesmerising. And Jong-seo Jun is a revelation. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 29, 2018
Personally, for that reason, I would have lopped off the final scene, which I simply didn’t believe in, and which, if anything, resolves too much. A movie as cryptic as “Burning” deserves to hang fire. Read full review
80
Time OutGeoff AndrewMay 24, 2018
Both a slow-burn suspense drama and an intriguing enigma, his film is beautifully executed throughout: the three lead performances are all spot on, while Mowg’s jazzy score and Hong Kyung-pyo’s immaculate camerawork fit the shifting moods to perfection. Read full review
80
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 19, 2018
Lee Chang-dong’s dexterity with the telling minutiae of human interactions ensures that Burning makes for an emotionally gripping film. I’m not sure he sticks the landing, however: The finale, while it doesn’t actually resolve anything, felt to me more convenient than convincing. But maybe that’s because I had too much invested in these characters. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 17, 2018
This is a gripping nightmare. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 17, 2018
There is so much fascinating, underplayed tension running through Burning.... I was a little let down, then, when Burning lost its steam in its second half. Read full review
60
Film Journal InternationalChris BarsantiOct 25, 2018
This is a movie that ripples with sublimated fury well before the bloody and shocking long take that ends everything without much of an answer. But it is also a movie that leaves too much unsaid and takes too long to end up nowhere. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonNov 14, 2018
The second-half of Burning is allegorical and intentionally obtuse. It’s intriguing, even. But it all leads to an ending that satisfies no one, especially after 2½ hours. Read full review
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