The Northman
Focus Features | Release Date: April 22, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 60 Critic Reviews
Positive:
50
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinKaren GordonApr 25, 2022
It is a wild and trippy ride that mixes “reality,” with sequences that dip into the mystical world of the Vikings, and back out again. It’s also meticulously made, with an attention to detail as close to actual 10th century Viking life as is possible. Read full review
100
Film ThreatLorry KiktaApr 23, 2022
Eggers immerses us in the world of Norse mythology, where Odin reigns supreme and Valkyries carry you to Valhalla if you die in battle. Visually and technically, the movie is a marvel. Read full review
100
NMEAlex FloodApr 22, 2022
It’s all properly violent and uncivilised. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 22, 2022
Loving it is not the issue, of course—the level of amputating, eviscerating, decapitating violence transcends good nasty fun. The challenge is taking it in, watching it without averting your eyes—I can’t say mine stayed fixed on the screen—and seeing it for what it is, a tumultuous, graphically gorgeous entertainment for our time as well as an ineffably somber meditation on our species’ seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of savagery. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 20, 2022
Like his memorable period freakouts “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” though on a vastly more ambitious scale, The Northman is both a dazzling display of film craft and a sly retooling of genre, a movie that delights in fulfilling certain conventions while turning others on their artfully severed heads. Read full review
100
ObserverEmily ZemlerApr 20, 2022
The Northman is a big-budget epic, but it retains those indie roots, with Eggers bringing in all of the elements that have made his past films so aesthetically successful. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 12, 2022
The Northman lives and breathes like the old epics; not Old Hollywood's cartoonish depictions of warriors with horned helmets, but the ancient tales to which he pays deep respect. Read full review
100
Time OutPhil de SemlyenApr 11, 2022
Make it your destiny to see this blood-soaked odyssey along the edge of the world as soon as possible. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeApr 11, 2022
Perhaps Eggers has lost some of the horrible intimacy we savoured in his earlier work. But he offers us compensation in scope, intensity and pure bloody ferocity. Read full review
100
Total FilmMatt MaytumApr 11, 2022
A truly distinctive epic, blending brutal violence, powerhouse performances and otherworldly imagery into its volcanic rampage of revenge. Unmissable. Read full review
100
Little White LiesHannah StrongApr 11, 2022
It’s a film with fingerprints all over it; one that has been crafted rather than manufactured, and rewatches reveal a chance to revel in its sharpness; a scene in which Amleth seeks the counsel of a blind Seeress (the incomparable Björk) teems with intricate set and costume details, while a violent game of Knattleikr – a Viking cross between lacrosse and rugby – proves more adrenaline-inducing than any CGI special of recent years. Read full review
100
EmpireHanna FlintApr 11, 2022
This is intimate, culturally rich storytelling on a brutally epic scale. Skarsgård is in his element, bolstered by a sensational cast throwing themselves headfirst into Eggers and Sjón’s awe-inspiring vision. A cinematic saga worthy of the ancestors. Read full review
100
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyApr 11, 2022
It’s a big risk to spend that much cash on an auteur-driven historical epic at a time when historical epics have largely fallen by the wayside. But what a beautiful risk it is. I call upon Odin: may The Northman make a billion dollars. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 11, 2022
The Northman is a horribly violent, nihilistic and chaotic story about the endless cycle of violence, the choice between loving your friends and hating your enemies – which turns out to be no choice at all, and the thread of fate down which masculinity’s delicious toxin drips. It’s entirely outrageous, with some epic visions of the flaring cosmos. I couldn’t look away. Read full review
95
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 22, 2022
The final act of The Northman is as violent and intense as a story that inspired Hamlet should be, but all the gore and swordplay would leave no lasting impression were it not for the sincerity of Eggers’s vision. Read full review
91
UproxxVince ManciniApr 15, 2022
The Northman is Shakespeare, but it’s also a movie about muscular shirtless men growling at each other. For me, it was near to perfect. Read full review
91
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonApr 11, 2022
On its own, it’s still an incredible achievement, amplifying a blood-soaked adventure epic in the haunting specters of witchcraft and folklore that will still challenge viewers without leaving them fully out in the cold. Odin willing, it can offer a window for folks to look into Eggers’ more Bergmanesque works, and inject a little more cinematic curiosity into a palate that’s often dulled by CGI sameness. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichApr 11, 2022
It’s not like this movie is a punishing chore; it’s not like Eggers doesn’t want multiplex audiences to like it. And they will. Because this is the kind of filmmaking that rips you out of your body so hard that you’re liable to forget what year it is. Read full review
91
The PlaylistCarlos AguilarApr 11, 2022
A staggering feat of visceral filmmaking, The Northman, like Eggers’ previous films, warrants profound analysis while still delivering a high-octane action odyssey. Some of the flourishes the director opted for, as well as the film’s overall demeanor (neither entirely self-serious nor fully whimsical), may receive mixed reactions. Still what Eggers has ambitiously crafted lands as an invigorating beacon for an industry in need of studio fare with substantial ideas and artistry. Read full review
90
VoxAlissa WilkinsonApr 27, 2022
Eggers recreated, with obsessive accuracy, the world of the medievals in order to lower us into a myth that feels primordial and strange, as if it’s tapping into something in the back of our minds that we’ve always known but half forgotten. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreApr 24, 2022
The Northman doesn’t invite its viewers into its world, but instead dares them to try to catch up. Read full review
90
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzApr 19, 2022
The brutal, bloody and bare-chested revenge thriller is essentially one big, long war cry – a guttural, primal grunt of a movie that is all raging testosterone and incendiary machismo. And I loved nearly every minute of it. Read full review
90
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeApr 11, 2022
The Northman is gory, muddy, hallucinatory — and intensely entertaining. An examination of the way that violence begets violence, and a study of how a life devoted to single-minded hatred and vengeance can lead to uncomfortable truths, this is a movie that lives up to every saga comic books and metal bands ever spun about the brutal conquerors of yore. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 25, 2022
The Northman is gripping cinema of the sort that we get too little of today, when too often a director’s vision is diluted by box office imperatives and the lure of four-quadrant appeal. Read full review
88
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganApr 25, 2022
Forged in flame and fury, Robert Eggers’ The Northman is an exquisite tale of violent vengeance that takes no prisoners. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 20, 2022
The Northman is often insanely over the top and there are moments when it feels as if Eggers could maybe ease his foot off the pyrotechnic pedals, but still, this is one of the most strikingly original and brutally effective movies of the year so far. Read full review
86
PolygonKatie RifeApr 11, 2022
Although the film ends up as a shallow rumination on revenge and single-minded dominance, it’s hard to beat as spectacle. In terms of making history exciting and engrossing, The Northman is about as titillating as gateway drugs get. Read full review
85
SlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiApr 11, 2022
It's when the film meets between these two modes — the mythic and the realistic — that it's at its most thrilling. Read full review
83
ColliderRoss BonaimeApr 11, 2022
There are few filmmakers that can make the leap from smaller, insular stories into large-scale epics, but with The Northman, Eggers has proved that his style and substance can remain intact, regardless of the size of the story. Read full review
83
The Film StageJordan RaupApr 11, 2022
With a strong sense of authenticity and purpose, The Northman is designed to unnerve and repel. In a wide release landscape of easy-to-please, vaporous entertainment, such feats should be celebrated. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 25, 2022
The Northman, whether you approach it as legitimate folklore or as a testosterone-fueled Saturday-afternoon lark, speaks to the 10-year-old boy in all of us, with a loud and mighty Viking burp. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsApr 25, 2022
It’s an oft-stunning visual feast and an entertaining peek into Eggers’ instincts as a choreographer not only of historical detail but of bloody action. It is also an instructive example of how the most visionary intentions can’t always enliven an otherwise rote story. Read full review
80
Vanity FairRichard LawsonApr 22, 2022
Eggers’s action sequences are swift and brutal, filled with the crunch of life extinguished and tossed into the bone pile of time. Skarsgård, hulking and seething, is a fine vessel for the film’s opulent menace. He’s a fearsome, yet elegant, creature of destruction as he hacks and slashes away. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 21, 2022
What’s perhaps most impressive about The Northman is that it hurtles through 136 minutes of musclebound, shaggy-maned mayhem without a whisper of camp or a wink of irony. Nobody is doing this for fun. Even if, in the end — thank goodness — that’s mostly what it amounts to. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredScott CampbellApr 18, 2022
The Northman is wild, startling, fascinating, and phenomenal at once, but hopefully it’s just the beginning of Eggers regularly being handed sizeable budgets to deliver more sprawling near-masterpieces. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyApr 11, 2022
The Northman is certainly a lot of movie, and while its hysterical intensity at times veers into overwrought silliness, it’s both unstinting and exhilarating in its depiction of a culture ruled by the cycles of violence. The cohesion of Eggers’ vision commands admiration, as does the commitment of his collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyApr 11, 2022
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t – Alexander Skarsgård's Prince Amleth rampages through a mythological epic of savage beauty. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyApr 21, 2022
Everything feels strange, savage, implacably other: royalty alongside slavery, formality prized yet pity nowhere to be found. The Northman seems so foreign, as it should. Yet what Eggers never forgets, and this does almost as much as his talent does to make his film so frequently compelling, is that what to the characters is mundane is to us unreal — and vice versa. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenApr 21, 2022
The Northman throws a few wrinkles into its vengeance story, but doesn’t offer up much food for thought. This is mostly a visual extravaganza of gritty historical detail, mythic imagination, and brutally horrific violence. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 20, 2022
It’s a hearty stew of influences and rewards and, yes, some gristle. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubTomris LafflyApr 12, 2022
At least from an ambition standpoint, Eggers’ devotion pays off in heaps. The Northman offers a lot to enjoy in what is a lot of movie. It features both see-it-to-believe-it “fuck yeah!” gruesomeness in its 10th Century tale and the kind of historical and mythical attention to detail to be expected from Eggers Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 12, 2022
It’s never less than epic, never less than the new benchmark in Viking stories put on film. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattApr 11, 2022
Beneath the runes and visions, it's a tale as old as Game of Thrones, and as simple as a story told around a campfire: a ride of the Valkyries spelled out in gore and popcorn. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 11, 2022
For almost half of the movie, you might wonder why Nicole Kidman chose to take such a lackluster role. The answer: Just wait — and brace yourself. Kidman is never happier than when she gets to go to extremes, and by that measure, Queen Gudrun is one of her happiest roles. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsApr 11, 2022
Eggers’ brand of psychological shock is bolder here than his prior works and potent in bursts, but barely works on boldness alone. Read full review
70
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganApr 11, 2022
The Northman is often bloody smart entertainment, although, essentially, it is also the good time that doesn’t realise that the fun has stopped. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJake CoyleApr 21, 2022
The mythic simplicity is part of the point of The Northman, but the movie’s single-minded protagonist and its elemental conflicts verge closer to “Conan the Barbarian” territory than perhaps is ideal. Eggers’ film is only fitfully enchanting and squanders its mean momentum. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 20, 2022
As arresting and elaborate as the images are in The Northman, there are just as many sequences that revert strictly to pulpy, B-movie type. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesScott GreenstoneApr 18, 2022
If you want to see a Conan the Barbarian-ish Vikesploitation movie, this one is more immersive but less action-packed than you might want. If you want to see a medieval art film, watch last year’s “The Green Knight.” If you want to watch a great Robert Eggers movie, go stream “The Witch.” Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMark HansonApr 11, 2022
While the canvas of Robert Eggers latest is considerably broader than that of The Witch and the Lighthouse, it feels as if its psychological chaos hasn’t expanded accordingly. Read full review
60
SlateDana StevensApr 25, 2022
At 137 minutes, The Northman can feel ponderously crammed with both mystic visions (however hauntingly rendered) and Mel Gibson–grade sadistic gore. Somewhere around the two-hour point, the endless bone-crunching battle scenes—while impeccably choreographed and breathtakingly shot in fluid long takes—start to become existentially wearying and even morally suspect. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 25, 2022
It’s a gutsy piece of work, not only in the reach of its ambition but also in its willingness to show us actual guts. Read full review
60
CNNBrian LowryApr 21, 2022
Director/co-writer Robert Eggers ("The Lighthouse") has sought to make the definitive Viking movie, and while the film issues a guttural cry for theatrical viewing, it is built around such a basic revenge plot as to blunt those simple charms. Read full review
60
CineVueChristopher MachellApr 18, 2022
What is most satisfying about the film is its full and non-ironic commitment to a ludicrously operatic masculinity. There is surely no other way to end such a piece than the way it does. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeApr 18, 2022
While the Norns-of-fate narrative may contrive several reversals of fortune and sympathy, there’s little of the genuinely uncanny weirdness that made Eggers’s first two features such a treat. What madness lies herein is not of the north-northwest variety but more in keeping with the bonkers blockbuster spectacle of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 11, 2022
The story, meanwhile, strains to be a masterpiece. And the strain shows. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 11, 2022
In most respects, Eggers is a unique artist with strong, singular ideas of how to script, stage and pace his films, and while The Northman is nothing if not a signature addition to a most original oeuvre — no one but Eggers would or could have reimagined “Hamlet” thus — it lacks the element of surprise that made “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” feel like instant classics. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiApr 11, 2022
While The Northman has a lot to offer and is quite beautiful and masterful in its execution, there is something missing. The film begins to meander a bit in the middle before getting back on track and the lack of additional character development — anything that would have given the film more depth — prevents The Northman from reaching its full potential. Read full review
60
BBCNicholas BarberApr 11, 2022
Compared to most US action adventures, The Northman is adventurous and distinctive. It feels compromised, but the great stuff outweighs the not-so-great stuff. To see or not to see? If that is the question, the answer is: see it. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyApr 25, 2022
Instead of the roots of Shakespeare’s play, The Northman merely serves up its raw material both half-baked and overcooked. Read full review
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