Climax
A24 | Release Date: March 1, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
11
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueKatie DriscollSep 19, 2018
It’s full of epic bombast, (he even claims that it is based on a true story) jolting you out of complacency with shock, colour and music. Read full review
100
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 16, 2018
Climax isn’t so much about the inevitability of chaos, but about the sadness of watching something beautiful fall apart. And it is never less than electrifying. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 14, 2018
Pairing his usual boundary-pushing sex-and-drugs fixation with a vital presentation of wildly exuberant dance and movement, Gaspar Noe has made a film that’s seductive in its rhythms and bold visualization of his young dancers’ sometimes beautiful, other times brutal somatic expressiveness. Read full review
100
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 14, 2018
It’s all insane and intoxicating, and what’s perhaps most remarkable is that, ultimately, the ugliness and excess is legitimized by being in the service of an elaborate and ecstatically realized celebration of dancing as an art form. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 14, 2018
There’s a spontaneity to Climax—a naturalistic immediacy born of its exceptional, energetic cast of unknowns, firing off entirely improvised jokes and insults and threats. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 14, 2018
Gaspar Noé’s remarkable psychedelic ride is his most focused achievement, a concise package of sizzling dance sequences and jolting developments that play like a slick mashup of the “Step Up” franchise and “Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” not to mention the disorienting cinematic trickery of Noé’s own provocative credits. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 14, 2018
I was shocked to discover that I was actually … touched. Climax is a small miracle, and if this is Noé going soft (for him, of course), that might actually be a very good thing for the movies. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSep 4, 2018
Gaspar Noé's camera captures every freak-out, recrimination, stolen kiss, and betrayal in what is a miracle of synchronicity. Read full review
80
Time OutJoseph WalshMar 8, 2019
Part musical, part political treatise, and with more than a wink to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Noé is at his most decadent and devilish. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 28, 2019
Long after the dance-movie thrills are in the rearview and before the images turn themselves upside down — before the movie becomes a literal danse macabre — you find yourself impressed by the fact that he’s not out to recreate a bad acid trip. He’s trying to create his own bad trip sans the drugs. And the fucked up thing about it is: You end up wanting to go along for the ride. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeOct 2, 2018
What it all adds up to, other than a moment-by-moment experiential overload, is uncertain. Read full review
80
EmpireHelen O'HaraSep 24, 2018
This is often upsetting (though never to the levels of Irréversible) but as energetic and handsome as its cast. At times you’ll be watching in horror, but you’ll never look away. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyMay 14, 2018
You may emerge from Climax, as from a full-on club night, feeling shattered and asking yourself what was the point of it all. But there’s no denying the mastery of Noé and his team, and the extravagant talent of his cast. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 14, 2018
Noé has created a churning, repellent, wildly sexy tanztheaterwerk of pure Boschian decadence and derangement. It’s nice to have him back. Read full review
80
CineVueMartyn ConterioMay 14, 2018
The film is freaky, experimental, sometimes hilarious and unnervingly intense. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 14, 2018
It is as if Noé has somehow mulched up the quintessence of dance, coke and porn together and squooshed it into his camera. If that sounds horrible, then yes it is, but also, often, demonically inspired. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 13, 2019
It’s unnerving at times, assaulting at others. “Disorienting” is the idea, and even if many of the tricks are simple and the plot unfolds along a generally predictable track, Climax achieves that goal. And how. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshMar 8, 2019
Because the film is such a technically dazzling marvel of staging, cinematography and sound, it is as physically and visually intoxicating as the punch, but Noe has loaded the transfixing, orgiastic display with land mines that will always keep you on your toes. Read full review
75
Washington PostHau ChuMar 5, 2019
Noé has made what might be his most accessible and, yes, tender film to date, teasing the idea of heavenly bliss — before heading straight to hell. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMar 1, 2019
Watching all of those clips drove home how dance cinematography like this is mostly — and sadly — a lost art. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittFeb 28, 2019
You won’t be able to tear your eyes off the screen, both because of the physically magnetic performances and also because it’s hard to fathom what madness exactly is going on at times. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 8, 2018
Just as it seems that Noé will tip over into the truly extreme, he backs off. If this is the dawn of a new, slightly restrained Noé, we might need five more stages to process the pivot. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 14, 2018
This is exhaustingly exhibitionist cinema, that wants to be looked at for the sake of being looked at — for the crispness of its moves, not the complexity of its concepts, and that can get wearying after a while. Read full review
67
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 8, 2018
As a parade of exaggerated neon-soaked atrocities, Climax is certainly never boring, but it often strains credulity where it aims to provoke genuine discomfort. It exhausts where it should provoke. Read full review
60
SlateInkoo KangMar 5, 2019
If you like postmodern gimmickry and modern dance, and are OK with sitting through nearly 10 minutes of staged talking-head interviews, glum stoner talk about abortion, nausea-inducing filmmaking, characters whose motivations don’t make sense, horror, exploitative child death, and a quasi-coercive lesbian make-out—but just don’t care to be reminded “Drugs! Are! Bad!”: Leave 89 minutes in. Or don’t come at all, because Climax really isn’t about anything more than that. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 28, 2019
What makes the extended trip-tastic finale ultimately disappointing is that it remains a resolutely exterior experience, a set of wild but recycled gestures that reminds you just how tedious watching someone else’s LSD high can be. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 28, 2019
Even though the techniques are immersive — plunging you into a disorienting reality that mirrors the drug-fueled frenzy you are witnessing — the effect is also curiously distancing. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 14, 2018
Climax works, at least when it’s willing to be a human drama. But then it sinks in that you’re watching “Fame” directed by the Marquis de Sade with a Steadicam. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 8, 2019
Alas, with the notable exception of the empathetic Boutella, the cast of “Climax” consists primarily of dancers who are not actors. And as actors, they’re really good dancers. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonMar 7, 2019
I wonder if Noe is familiar with the work of Three Dog Night, and their 1970 rumination on a party gone bad, “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Its lyrics apply here: “I’ve seen so many things I ain’t never seen before. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to see no more.” Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 6, 2019
Climax is the first Noé film, though, to flirt with the novel sensation of boredom. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 27, 2019
It’s innovative and exhilarating at times, and then innovative and oppressive and relentless and repetitive and tiresome, but it’s never exactly boring. People will walk out of Climax, not for lack of interest, but for lack of endurance. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyFeb 27, 2019
Is it possible to be an enfant terrible when you’re 55? Unrepentant French provocateur Gaspar Noé pushes that question (and your buttons) to the breaking point with his latest transgressive import, Climax. Read full review
40
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsMar 20, 2019
Climax feels like what happens when a provocateur grows up. Noé, a nominally outré festival regular three decades into his career, is unmistakably washed. The jig is up, as of Climax, if not even earlier. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerFeb 27, 2019
In transgressive cinema, there is only one real sin, and that is to be boring. Somewhere around the six-hour mark of Gaspar Noé's 96-minute drug freakout fable Climax. Read full review
20
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMar 13, 2019
It's not that Climax is a poorly made movie. It's that it's an abjectly mean movie. Some would try to excuse it as arthouse cinema. In reality, it's frighthouse cinema. And that's not meant as a compliment. The ultimate message, at least in this case: Just say no -- to Noé. Read full review
20
Arizona RepublicScott CravenMar 12, 2019
Climax is actually two movies, one in which you hang out at a party with young dancers who are as wearisome as they are flexible, and the other with the same group on acid. Neither is the least bit interesting. Read full review
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