Playground
Film Movement | Release Date: February 11, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireAlex GodfreyApr 25, 2022
A claustrophobic portrait of pre-adolescent turmoil, this is an exceptionally taut drama. It’s Wandel’s debut feature, and it feels like she’s been preparing for it her whole life. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellApr 23, 2022
Both Vanderbeque and Duret give star turns here: utterly believable as brother and sister, each performance informs the other as they try to survive each day. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 13, 2022
This is the first feature from the writer-director Laura Wandel, and it’s a knockout, as flawlessly constructed as it is harrowing. Read full review
92
Paste MagazineChloe WalkerFeb 11, 2022
Wandel’s movie is immersive and bruising, full of empathy for its young characters, and unrelenting in its depiction of the challenges they face. And it makes you wonder, with utmost sincerity—how did any of us ever reach adulthood in one piece? Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 17, 2022
No one in this movie has a complete understanding of what’s going on, but Wandel proves that a sensitive enough camera can provide a fuller picture than most. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 10, 2022
Playground is bleak, bleak stuff. It’s also electrifying. Read full review
90
VarietyJessica KiangNov 4, 2021
Wandel’s immersive, impressive debut is rigorous in its resolute focus on one little girl fighting a lonely, frightened battle for her future selfhood, in which what hangs in the balance is nothing less than the shape and measure of her developing soul. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 8, 2022
Playground is so vividly-detailed that it could be triggering to anyone whose childhood wasn’t ideal. And even if you don’t get ugly flashbacks from it, you will marvel how any of us get through this hazing rite of passage without permanent scars or long-term psychotherapy. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comCarlos AguilarFeb 11, 2022
Fashioned out of fresh faces unable to lie to the camera, “Playground” is a study in human behavior wrapped in equal parts fear and curiosity. Read full review
83
IndieWireSusannah GruderFeb 11, 2022
While Wandel does well to leave some things to the imagination, like what happens beyond the schoolyard, she not-so-subtly nails the point home in the end, showing how all it takes is one person to stop bullying at its source. Still, her film is an arresting, eye-opening look at how violence begins at an early age, and how we can learn to be bystanders, or have the strength to speak out. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared MobarakFeb 10, 2022
Wandel pulls no punches in her depiction, and both Leklou and Vanderbeque deliver performances well beyond their years. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 27, 2022
Vitally, Wandel doesn’t ramp up the misery here for dramatic effect, but rather successfully makes the fairly everyday unpleasantness feel as chest-clutchingly hopeless as it would to – well, a seven-year-old. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeApr 23, 2022
It is piercingly insightful without ever labouring the point. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyApr 21, 2022
At 72 minutes, Playground falls shy of feature length, yet it atones with a sickening sense of dread and pinpoint emotional accuracy. The performances that Wandel coaxes out of her young cast are remarkable and often painful to behold. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 21, 2022
At just 72 minutes, this is a brief, intense feature: it’s possible that Wandel envisaged it as even shorter than it actually is, and perhaps its narrative tendons slacken a little after the initial spasm of horror. But what an incredible performance from Vanderbeque: an intuition of fear and pain and moral outrage that goes beyond acting. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeDec 29, 2021
Despite its subject matter, Playground is not a call to action masked as a film. It’s a gripping work of observation more concerned with identifying patterns, teasing out motivations and laying bare the reality of how we come to relate to one another. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 11, 2022
Playground smartly complicates the situation by showing how Nora juggles her desperate concern for her brother with a fear that his plummeting social stock might drag her into the same boat. It’s hard to watch, but Wandel doesn’t blink. Read full review
60
Little White LiesCaitlin QuinlanApr 21, 2022
Wandel displays her clear skill as a director of actors in this exercise, but there is the sense that this could have been a painfully visceral short film instead of elongated into a feature where it begins to feel overdone. Read full review
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