Misericordia
Janus Films | Release Date: March 21, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Saffron MaeveMar 26, 2025
With Misericordia, Guiraudie deftly strikes the balance between the playfully sacrilegious and the sociopathic, rounded out by a seductively bizarre cast of dwellers and clusters of puckered, corpse-fed mushrooms. Read full review
100
The PlaylistAnkit JhunjhunwalaMay 27, 2024
This is rigorous filmmaking of the highest order, controlled and precise to the exclusion of anything extraneous —evidenced by its taut 100-minute runtime. Read full review
91
IndieWireRyan LattanzioMar 21, 2025
What a miracle of a movie. Read full review
91
The Film StageLeonardo GoiMay 27, 2024
For all its morbid undertones and philosophical ruminations, Misericordia is neither a dirge nor a lofty symposium. Strange as it may be to say for a story that begins with a burial and then shatters after a heinous death, this is a supremely and surprisingly funny film, where humor gradually accrues a subversiveness not unlike desire’s own. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 1, 2025
Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia is an existential drama masquerading as a comedy masquerading as a thriller. Read full review
90
The New York TimesWesley MorrisMar 20, 2025
Misericordia is film noir with the lights turned on. Even when its characters are working your nerves, it tickles. Guiraudie is playing those nerves like a harp. Read full review
90
VarietyJessica KiangMay 27, 2024
Instead it’s a slippery, changeable parable about a particularly amoral cuckoo looking to feather a new nest. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 14, 2025
The rhythm and plotting of Misericordia subverts expectations, not with story twists but with a tonal game of three-card monte. Read full review
88
Washington PostTy BurrApr 11, 2025
Even if such murky doings aren’t your cup of absinthe, the skill with which Guiraudie weaves his web is mesmerizing. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsMar 21, 2025
It’s not a hard movie to follow or fall for, as fans of Guiraudie’s earlier movies already know. He commands our attention even when his characters are either too ridiculous or too petty to be taken seriously. Read full review
88
The Daily BeastNick SchagerMar 18, 2025
A superb thriller that employs common genre devices for a canny and caustic rumination on right and wrong, love and lust, virtue and vice. Read full review
80
Little White LiesThomas DawsonApr 1, 2025
Guiraudie successfully fashions his own singular cinematic world. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyMar 26, 2025
The director of Stranger by the Lake returns to the deadpan, sexually unstable working-class environs that have shaped many of his previous films with this pleasingly confounding tale of displaced characters and desires. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMar 24, 2025
Misericordia is, fundamentally, a snappy and satisfying entertainment, a thriller that thrills. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJoshua RothkopfMar 21, 2025
This isn’t the kind of puzzle thriller in which all the elements click into place with a thudding literalism that compliments an attentive eye. It’s one that accommodates the vagaries of human behavior, leaving punishment aside as a secondary concern. Read full review
80
ColliderJeff EwingMar 20, 2025
It's a strong and highly watchable thriller that shouldn't be missed. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyMay 27, 2024
This might suggest that Misericordia is ultimately a film with a message, and a more solemn one than we’re used to with Guiraudie. But any apparent clarity should be taken with a pinch of salt, the film’s meanings shifting as constantly as the erotic drives between the various male (and occasionally female) characters. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenDec 5, 2025
Stunning on every account, however, is the cinematography by Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Saint Omer). Working with an autumnal setting, Mathon manages to give each tree its own light, while also allowing the dark, mysterious undergrowth to add an unsettling darkness. Such shots are the most troublingly beautiful element of the movie. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiz BraunMar 25, 2025
Moments of brilliance notwithstanding, the comedy and the dark look at human nature in Misericordia never quite meld. For any student of human nature, that unreliable narrator and the gang of unlikeable characters may eventually wear thin. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMar 20, 2025
While it lacks the surrealistic and fairy-tale elements that distinguish many of Guiraudie’s films (among them Sunshine For The Poor, Time Has Come, and Staying Vertical), Misericordia is nonetheless pervaded by a casual dreaminess and a disregard for the strictures of realism that leads in some (intentionally) silly directions. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineBrad HanfordSep 10, 2024
Misericordia finds Alain Guiraudie revisiting old standbys under a relatively conventional set of aesthetic strategies. Fortunately, the ideas roiling under the former wildman’s newly placid surfaces are as potent as ever. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesMar 20, 2025
By its end, “Misericordia” emerges as a drama by turns chilling and absurd, with some of its twists daring us toward incredulity. Yet Mr. Guiraudie’s mix of mischief-making and straight-faced conviction keeps us continuously unsettled, and continuously curious. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 27, 2024
The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France, Guiraudie’s strange and sober new film does the trick. Read full review
68
Paste MagazineJim VorelMar 21, 2025
At times arrestingly suspenseful, at others bitterly funny, but often inert in its transitions, Misericordia is an occasionally confounding mixed bag, but one that stands out for the realistic recriminations of a place where grievances run deep and mercy comes with strings attached. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 10, 2025
Misericordia feels like a big metaphysical shrug, sluggish to the point of lethargy. Read full review
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