El Conde
Netflix | Release Date: September 8, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 13, 2023
A chamber-sized display of cinematic razzle-dazzle, and convoluted political allegory filled with gallows humour and broad polemics, Pablo Larraín’s El Conde re-imagines the Chilean dictator as the 250-year-old vampire star of a 1930s horror movie. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 31, 2023
While the investigative midsection slumps just a little, El Conde remains a spellbinding and mischievously spry spin on a deadly serious subject from a director who, in his tenth feature, continues to come up with audacious surprises. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comCarlos AguilarSep 15, 2023
This wickedly funny, blood-soaked portrait of a decaying tyrant hits streaming on the week of the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup against President Allende. Larraín offers no false hopes about eradicating the ideologies that allowed it to happen and last. Instead, he warns that evil never truly perishes—it just transforms to poison new minds. Read full review
85
TheWrapTomris LafflySep 1, 2023
Narrated in crispy voiceover like a Grimm tale, the result is something unexpected: fun, bloody and ambitiously centuries-spanning, the film demonstrates with sting over one-too-many freshly-blended heart cocktails that malevolence has always been an everlasting presence amongst us. Read full review
85
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeAug 31, 2023
It’s no easy thing to mine humor out of historical tragedy, but El Conde finds a zone that allows for rueful chuckles over humanity’s cruelty without ever being glib about Chile’s dark past. Read full review
83
ColliderChase HutchinsonSep 1, 2023
The cruelty at the core of this vivacious vampiric farce is blended up with sharp yet silly gallows humor, ensuring the grim absurdities Larraín gracefully teases out increasingly take flight even as he continually drags us into gruesome and gory depths. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossAug 31, 2023
If in his previous films about the regime Larraín often opted for subtlety, in El Conde elusiveness is a foreign notion. It is thrilling to watch the director repeatedly hit the nail in the head without much desire—or care—to engage with subtext. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 15, 2023
It may not be Larraín’s best film (we’d nominate No). But it’s unquestionably the movie he was, in so many ways, born to make. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 14, 2023
El Conde is a visual feast as much as a visceral one, but its artful poise belies its bloodlust. Larraín is making his points here not with fang-like precision, but a gleeful crocodilian chomp. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreySep 14, 2023
It bleeds pure, righteous bitterness. Larraín jumps at the chance to turn political ideology into a literal horror show. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 12, 2023
A true original and deserving winner of the Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, El Conde’s heart-feasting, sexual subplots and accusatory banter coalesce into an extended and unmissable Grand Guignol finale. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Ellen E JonesSep 10, 2023
Larraín’s film demonstrates a palate for mordant humour as refined as the count’s taste for blood. Read full review
80
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 8, 2023
Are fascist dictators really vampires? That’s the shockingly funny premise behind director Pablo Lorrain’s look at Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror over Larrain’s native Chile. Flaws and all, this spellbinder speaks scarily to the undying nature of tyranny. You’ll laugh till it hurts. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangAug 31, 2023
As a magnificently unlovable art-house object, El Conde is perhaps best approached as a challenge: Run the gauntlet if you dare, and if, at the other end, you emerge dazed and disturbed rather than straightforwardly entertained, perhaps those are just the splinters you get when you try to stake a vampire. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriAug 31, 2023
Beneath all the genre theatrics, what comes through most vividly in El Conde are Larraín’s sadness and rage at what happened to his country. Read full review
77
The Daily BeastNick SchagerAug 31, 2023
A stylishly pessimistic portrait of one man’s villainy and, just as stingingly, the way in which it infected all that he touched—as if through the very blood. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubDrew GillisSep 14, 2023
What saves El Conde is the specificity of its subject and the style of its auteur. Read full review
75
ObserverLaura BabiakSep 11, 2023
El Conde is not Larraín’s best work, weighing itself down with plot and a few too many ideas to properly explore, but it is still quite good. Few directors take risks this big, and though this film doesn’t yield the most rewards, it’s a fascinatingly project. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrSep 6, 2023
El Conde might stretch its gimmicky premise a little past its welcome, but it is an intoxicating, overwhelming and gruesome cinematic experience nonetheless, which would make a fitting double feature with last year’s great historical legal thriller “Argentina 1985.” Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 31, 2023
El Conde isn’t big on subtlety (Lachman’s rich cinematography offers the film its only shades of gray), and so it feels like a missed opportunity that Larraín didn’t squeeze more juice from the all-too-relevant fact that deposing a fascist from power isn’t the same as defeating them. Read full review
65
SlashfilmJeremy MathaiSep 13, 2023
The razor-thin premise can't quite sustain itself. Taken as a whole, the film is a bit like a vampire draining an older victim of their blood: cold, thick, and unnourishing. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentSep 6, 2023
A visually arresting new entry in the Dracula canon; if only the satire was as biting as its unlikely vampire star. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 1, 2023
As fascism in South America, North America and Europe is rising from the grave, it needs a properly-aimed and delivered stake, rather than complacent sniggering Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 1, 2023
As a gorgeously conceptual art-horror object, El Conde frequently mesmerizes; as a proper evisceration of its subject, it can’t help but feel curiously defanged. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 31, 2023
This is another powerful addition to Larraín’s movies about the ongoing agony of Chile, and the Chilean people’s struggle to confront the past, armed with the hammer and the sharpened stake. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 16, 2023
It’s an allegory that works but never quite scores a knock-out blow and a satiric thriller that manages a lot of still-angry name-calling but little sense that this will ever be enough. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 15, 2023
Who needs a movie that is almost all predators, with barely a word from their prey? Read full review
50
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganAug 31, 2023
El Conde comes across as a well-funded toyshop for Larrian to play in, indulging flights of fantasy, paying homage, and exacting a retribution which could, should, have been a far more effective sandblast from a man who has spent much of his creative life holding this particular vampire to account. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineGregory NussenAug 31, 2023
The film never really leans into the farcical possibilities of its premise nor its earnest appraisal of Augusto Pinochet’s legacy. Read full review
40
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerSep 15, 2023
The concept behind the film is an amusing, if obvious, one-note gag stretched out to nearly two hours, and not a gag that’s particularly novel or one that offers Larraín much to expand upon. As a would-be political satire and a vampire film, El Conde simply doesn’t have much (sorry, sorry, I know) bite. Read full review
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