Dark Horse
Vitagraph Films | Release Date: June 8, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
TimeRichard CorlissJun 14, 2012
Solondz's most waywardly endearing film - his gentlest triumph. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJun 11, 2012
You could never call Solondz a humanist, but he achieves something I've never seen elsewhere: compassionate revulsion. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJun 7, 2012
Mr. Solondz brilliantly - triumphantly - turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJun 20, 2012
Someone like Abe could only prevail through the powers of denial and optimistic wishing, and Solondz makes that happen, as the film gradually slips into fantasy. Read full review
85
MovielineAlison WillmoreJun 7, 2012
While skipping the more shocking turns of something like "Happiness," Dark Horse does feel like a return to the fearless darkness of those earlier films, a tale of a loser who's fully drawn but never allowed to be lovable. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 9, 2012
Reality and fantasy become increasingly blurred. And if you want to enjoy Dark Horse, you're just going to have to go with it. Read full review
80
EmpireKim NewmanJun 25, 2012
Less confrontational than most Solondz movies, in that it refrains from violence or kink, but still unsettling and affecting. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid DenbyJun 11, 2012
Abe is blustery and self-pitying, but, with Solondz's new tender mercies fully engaged, Gelber makes you feel close to a guy for whom nothing was ever meant to go right. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 9, 2012
There's a streak of compassion in Dark Horse, a sincere empathy for a thoroughly detestable man, that is as surprising as anything in Solondz's earlier, more transgressive work. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJun 28, 2012
The plot's problem is insoluble: There is no honest ending for Abe other than a completely undramatic continuation of the trapped life he has lived so far. So we get narrative disjunction and a limp conclusion instead of the brilliant reversal of formula that was promised. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 21, 2012
It's a Solondz film; it's a given. Abe may deserve all that comes to him, but the question of how he got this way sustains the picture, against all odds. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasJun 6, 2012
The scenes between Gelber and Blair are the strongest in Dark Horse, because they form a bond not out of shared interests or passion, but a weary kind of compromise. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJun 21, 2012
In movies like "Happiness" and "Storytelling," Todd Solondz has staged some pretty horrifying courtships, but the one in this seventh feature is surprisingly gentle. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovJul 25, 2012
Farrow and Walken are terrifically semicomatose as Abe's mom and dad, and Murphy – as a co-worker who takes what appears to be pity on the eternally adolescent Abe – is equally memorable. Yet Dark Horse feels like a lesser Solondz film, despite its cavalcade of misanthropy. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsAug 3, 2012
As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 3, 2012
Seizing the role, and the screen, Gelber actually makes us care what happens to his surly, thoroughly unlikable character. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesStephanie ZacharekJul 26, 2012
Dark Horse is a comedy of bad manners that's imbued with uncertainty about the world and one man's place in it. Modest and mildly entertaining, it's a miniature portrait of a potentially jumbo-sized failure. Read full review
60
Total FilmNeil SmithJun 21, 2012
Though more forgiving than previous Solondz films, Dark Horse is too slight to herald a wholesale change of direction. Yet it's still worth catching, if only for Walken's terrible toupee. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoJun 7, 2012
He's either daring you not to laugh or daring you not to care, but either way, you'll laugh, care and worry about the consequences in Dark Horse. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJun 7, 2012
Abe's day-to-day trials may eventually seem like cheap daytime TV, but Gelber and Solondz know how to nail the uncomfortably funny optimism shadowing American desperation. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJun 5, 2012
The movie strays too far into fantasy - Abe suffers mightily - but Solondz still has an ear and an eye for a specific hell in the real world. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliJul 19, 2012
The combative, off-putting Dark Horse features many of writer-director Todd Solondz's usual preoccupations: misery, complexity, stunted emotions, misplaced dreams. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanJun 21, 2012
Fourteen years after "Happiness," why is director Todd Solondz still mucking around with the sort of idiot neurotic dweeb who makes George Costanza look like George Clooney? Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangJun 8, 2012
Result is far less abrasive than some of its predecessors, but for that very reason seems unlikely to generate the attention needed to meet Solondz's already modest commercial standards. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartJun 7, 2012
It's a typical Solondz sad-sack tale, but this film seems to be disgusted by its own characters, which isn't true of the director's best work ("Happiness," "Welcome to the Dollhouse"). We don't need to like Abe, but it's unsettling to feel the director might actively dislike him. Read full review
50
Village VoiceNick PinkertonJun 5, 2012
With Solondz's old-hat funeral deadpan and his efforts to pass off Abe's adolescent rage as elevated insight, Dark Horse is neither incisively black-comic nor particularly attuned to human behavior - proof that some directors, at least, do end up the way they started out. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJun 5, 2012
Never less than watchable and loaded with trademark negativity so extreme it's sometimes funny, the new film is nonetheless saddled with a protagonist so narrowly and unlikably presented that, in the end, he doesn't seem worth the time devoted to him. Read full review
40
The GuardianXan BrooksJun 5, 2012
There is little in the film's pitch-black interior that wasn't tackled better – with more bite, wit and abandon – in "Happiness," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," or "Storytelling." Read full review
38
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezJun 5, 2012
Yesterday, Solondz blocking the screen meant something, even if it was just his own petulance. Today, a blurred sign only signifies his capitulation to peer pressure. Read full review
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