Happy End
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 22, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJan 11, 2018
Haneke's ensemble is uniformly excellent – the film is packed with intriguing and provocative encounters between its various oppositional characters – and the actors succeed in the difficult task of making these unpleasant people engaging enough that we stick with them throughout a film that the director successfully balances on a knife edge between satire and drama until its final (hilarious) conclusion. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 27, 2017
It is not a new direction for this film-maker, admittedly, but an existing direction pursued with the same dazzling inspiration as ever. It is also as gripping as a satanically inspired soap opera, a dynasty of lost souls. Read full review
100
The PlaylistNikola GrozdanovicMay 27, 2017
As an austere and darkly comic family drama, and a scathing commentary about the kind of world our children are living in, Happy End is stunning cinema Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 27, 2017
Rather than smothering the material in bad vibes, the filmmaker uses them to gradually reveal a fascinating world in which anger and resentment becomes the only weapon any of these people know how to wield. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 21, 2017
If Happy End is something of a bad-seed nightmare, it turns out to be an unpredictable one, marked by unexpected flashes of warmth, sympathy and blistering humor. (It's been a while since a Haneke movie left me cackling in horror rather than reeling in it.) Read full review
90
The New York TimesGlenn KennyDec 21, 2017
It has an uncommonly strong ensemble cast...but the movie belongs to Mr. Trintignant. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonFeb 15, 2018
An art film in the classic sense — ambitious, provocative and hard to shake off. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiDec 22, 2017
One only has to go into his latest effort, Happy End, for a couple of minutes to realize that the old Haneke is back with a vengeance. Read full review
87
Paste MagazineTim GriersonMay 27, 2017
This repetition of old themes might suggest a filmmaker out of ideas. I’d argue the opposite: Happy End is a movie that’s fully alive, no matter how chilly it is. And its calm is a kind of rage, methodically cataloging the crimes and misdemeanors of a family that’s seemingly above consequence. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounDec 21, 2017
Happy End is more meandering and less contained, though, and it doesn’t have a central, gripping mystery like The White Ribbon to make you lean in more than you recoil. Rather, it’s a more diffuse film, and a more despairing one, although there are flashes of gallows humor to lighten the pileup of downers. As for the happy end? Happy hunting. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerDec 4, 2017
It is perhaps not top-notch Haneke but Happy End is an intermittently gripping film about loveless people in a joyless world. They could all do a lot worse than go on holiday with the characters from Paddington 2. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 27, 2017
Happy End may be something of a greatest hits mixtape, but it's also an arresting offering. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 4, 2018
Happy End is a puzzle and it's our job to connect the pieces. If it doesn't drive you crazy first, you'll find yourself maddened and mesmerized to the bitter end. Read full review
75
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 27, 2017
A major issue is that the characterizations don’t reach very deep and in the absence of a robust context or involving narrative, it’s actually the references to Haneke’s previous films that flesh out what is otherwise a rather perfunctory condemnation of the bourgeoisie equipped with the usual symbolic connotations. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 30, 2017
It is worth seeing Happy End for the long scene between him (Trintignant) and the remarkable Fantine Harduin — between the pitiless patriarch and his granddaughter. Together, they compare notes on the harm that they have done. From generation to generation, the blood runs cold. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungMay 27, 2017
Even admitting that films like Cache (Hidden), The White Ribbon and Amour have raised the bar higher and higher, Happy End feels like it’s pulling its punches and not in their league. For one thing, it’s hard to pin down the theme of the piece. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 27, 2017
Haneke’s integration of the ways we communicate and conduct our lives via phone and laptop feels uniquely effective. Read full review
70
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 27, 2017
Haneke’s magisterial control of tone, actor and shot is not to be underestimated: there are scenes of quiet, nuanced authority and menace here that, true to form, compel our attention with their glacial brilliance. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 27, 2017
It’s as if the director has tied up loose ends from his earlier films, while forcing us to re-examine issues that have only grown more dire since he first brought them to our attention. Read full review
70
VoxAlissa WilkinsonMay 27, 2017
Most good films rely on their audiences to connect the dots a little, but Happy End is all dots, with none of the lines drawn in at all. The meaning is there, but you have to dig for it in the everyday events of a family’s life. Read full review
67
ConsequenceSarah Kurchak
A Haneke who’s treading water is still a bizarrely entertaining filmmaker, but the fun is tinged with a hint of disappointment and a certain feeling of lost opportunity. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMar 14, 2018
Beautifully photographed, well composed, but disappointingly superficial. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 7, 2018
Happy End, for its part, signals a return to form for the director, who here makes a stark departure from the sweet tone of “Amour” — perhaps his most mainstream work — in favor of the vinegary outlook on life manifested in such films as “Funny Games,” his 2007 horror movie about violently psychopathic home invaders, and “The White Ribbon,” his 2009 pre-World War I period piece about, among other things, child abuse. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghJan 18, 2018
The narrative is so diffuse that putting together the pieces is beside the point. You feel no closer to knowing or understanding the Laurents, and their collective unpleasantness gives one little reason to want to. It’s a skilled ratcheting of discomfort – but to what end? Read full review
60
Village VoiceApril WolfeDec 21, 2017
As with so many of his films, Haneke asks: Why? Why abide by the rules? Why go on? Here, he’s created two characters — Georges and Eve — I want to see exploring those questions and a handful I really don’t. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 27, 2017
The director’s game is level, and typically mischievous, but lacks something - and it’s not just the vicious sting at the end of, say, Hidden. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 24, 2017
Happy End is far from the best Michael Haneke movie. But it just might be the most Michael Haneke movie — a kind of grueling greatest-hits collection from the reigning scold of European art cinema. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineCarson LundDec 21, 2017
Happy End reveals itself as something vacuous and cold, a bizarrely seductive pseudo-thriller lacking a thoroughly worked-out payoff. Read full review
50
Village VoiceBilge EbiriJun 21, 2017
Haneke has delivered the Haneke film that Haneke-haters see in their heads when they think of a Haneke film: a series of disjointed, narratively oblique episodes showing people being inhumane to each other. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 29, 2017
Happy End is the latest from Michael Haneke, an uncompromising filmmaker whose work is sometimes brilliant and sometimes hard to watch, and sometimes both, but not this time. Happy End is just hard to watch. Read full review
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