The Club
Music Box Films | Release Date: February 5, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMar 21, 2016
What’s most winning about ‘The Club’ is how Larrain manages to allude to the wider structures, behaviour and corruption of the church without ever making this claustrophobic, moody and very local story feel anything but crucial, thrilling and disturbing. Read full review
100
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaFeb 9, 2016
Though profoundly upsetting, The Club’s assault on institutionalized hypocrisy never risks feeling unjustified. Read full review
100
The GuardianRyan GilbeyDec 10, 2015
The Club sees the film-maker at his most masterful, steering the picture through complex tonal shifts without letting it capsize into hysteria, even when the characters do. Read full review
100
VarietyScott FoundasDec 10, 2015
Those willing to enter The Club will discover an original and brilliantly acted chamber drama in which Larrain’s fiercely political voice comes through as loud and clear as ever. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerDec 10, 2015
It’s a surprising and often thought-provoking effort from a filmmaker who has never chosen to take the simple path, confirming Larrain as one of the more genuine talents working in cinema today. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangDec 10, 2015
A bold, blunt, yet clinically intelligent film that provokes as much for its dark humor as for its righteous outrage, it's all at once a gripping thriller, an incendiary social critique and a mordant moral fable. Read full review
91
IndieWireNeil YoungDec 10, 2015
The Club is a bold and bracing allegory of a church tainted by scandals. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniFeb 19, 2016
We can't but enjoy the movie and its oddball characters - which makes us somehow complicit in their crimes. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 3, 2016
It's an interesting movie, odd and disturbing by design. But it's also effective. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 9, 2016
It’s occasionally beautiful, but just as often stomach-turning. You watch it at a remove, but still with a dull combination of pity and horror and regret. Maybe that’s the idea. For a brief, agonizing moment, you share the spiritual quicksand with these disgraced men. Read full review
80
CineVuePatrick GambleDec 10, 2015
The Club is an enthralling parable that's calibrated to shock and amuse in equal measure. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Eva SalinasFeb 18, 2016
Even with Pablo Larrain’s signature insights hidden in quiet and seemingly simple dialogue, and even with hints of his trademark dark humour, The Club may be one of the Chilean director’s most disturbing films. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanFeb 10, 2016
The result is expectedly harrowing and heartbreaking, making for a difficult watch that will reward those with saintly patience. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 3, 2016
This is no sympathetic drama of absolution, no portrait of forgiveness sought by sinners. Larraín is after something trickier and harder to pin down; he asks us to share real estate with these men, while offering few windows into their heads or hearts, or even a clarification of their crimes. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleFeb 11, 2016
Larraín, who wrote the movie with Guillermo Calderón and Daniel Villalobos, approaches the material like a scientist both fascinated and cynically bemused by how a particularly virulent sickness operates. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovMar 9, 2016
The Club isn’t an easy film to sit through (certainly not if the viewer is Catholic) but it’s a dramatically important and deeply contemporary piece of work. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughFeb 18, 2016
Enigmatic, atmospheric, and seductive, the film unfortunately sheds little light on subjects that have too long been hidden in the dark. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 18, 2016
Toward the end, the film veers a bit out of control, as the residents engage in behavior that is incomprehensible, even given their previous transgressions. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 5, 2016
There is power in this vision, but it can also feel forced, almost mechanical. Read full review
60
Screen DailyDan FainaruDec 10, 2015
One thing missing in Pablo Larrain’s new movie is a touch of Luis Bunuel. Without it, the fierce sarcastic attack he launches against the Catholic Church looks a little too much like a self-motivated settling of accounts, terribly angry and lacking a perspective that would put it all into the right context. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoFeb 18, 2016
The film is well acted, with especially strong work by Alonso and Zegers. And director Larraín has a powerful knack for depicting human monsters. But he stacks the deck so heavily that at times the film can seem like simple-minded anti-clericalism, and at least some viewers are bound to resist. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonFeb 5, 2016
Horror ultimately gives way to irritation as the film veers into violent shock tactics and misplaced blame. What begins as a righteous indictment devolves into an unnecessary vendetta. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonFeb 4, 2016
The psychology of The Club is warped and gnarled, the thinking of its members less-than-jesuitical. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlFeb 3, 2016
It's all well acted, especially the interrogations, and its specifics haunt and disturb. But as it aspires to parable it slumps into dark melodrama, with competing scenes of mob violence and individual characters freighted with so much allegoric significance that they stop feeling like people. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithFeb 3, 2016
The Club offers plenty of stifling, agonized atmosphere, but it’s all penitence and no redemption. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineClayton DillardJan 31, 2016
Pablo Larraín's thematic interests shift toward constructing a didactic tongue-lashing against the Catholic Church disguised as speculative fiction. Read full review
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