Totally Under Control
Neon | Release Date (Streaming): October 13, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 12, 2020
The movie is enraging, necessary, and above all, useful. Read full review
91
ConsequenceBlake GobleOct 7, 2020
Here’s a cocktail so potent that it may just snap even the most tired and cynical viewers out of apathy. Read full review
91
The PlaylistChris BarsantiOct 7, 2020
Focusing primarily on the pandemic’s opening act in the first half of 2020, Totally Under Control feels fresh off the editing table. It is so timely, in fact, that an on-screen note at the end informs viewers that one day after it was completed, Trump tested positive for COVID-19. It reads like a punchline to the least funny joke ever told. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattOct 7, 2020
The movie’s title, by the way, comes from the president’s own evaluation of his handling of the virus, a phrase he proudly repeated more than once. Read full review
90
UproxxMike RyanOct 8, 2020
Here are the last eight months all laid out for us, and it’s infuriating. Read full review
90
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeOct 8, 2020
This is a documentary that feels confident and intentional at every turn. It’s a story we need to know now, and it’s an essential warning for future generations. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 7, 2020
It is hardly the fault of this breathless, incisive and thoroughly infuriating movie that it already feels a touch out of date. How could it not? Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerOct 8, 2020
Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response? Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceyOct 22, 2020
Though most of the content here is too familiar for the film to qualify as an exposé, Totally Under Control adds background context and highlights some of the voices who raised early alarms about the dangers of the disease and the impending social disruption. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayOct 13, 2020
If anything, the biggest knock against Totally Under Control is that with a length of just over two hours, it sometimes feels as exhausting as it does exhaustive. Read full review
83
The Film StageMatt CipollaOct 12, 2020
It’s about the many forms of privilege and the intersecting failures they result in. Most of all, it’s about how this United States, this oh so great country of God, can’t understand the difference between liberty and entitlement. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRob RectorDec 17, 2020
The filmmakers have crafted an urgent watch that demands to be seen. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleOct 28, 2020
Doing these usually faceless public servants justice is vitally important. But Totally Under Control somehow feels unfinished. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerOct 23, 2020
An early entry into documenting Covid-19, Totally Under Control doesn’t have all the answers, but it is a vital, powerful examination of how one political administration could get something so wrong by ignoring the experts. Read full review
80
CNNBrian LowryOct 13, 2020
All told, there's not a whole lot new here. Still, for anyone who hasn't waded through Bob Woodward's book "Rage," or deeply reported accounts by the New York Times and others laying out Trump administration shortcomings, Gibney and company have delivered what is clearly intended to be a powerful closing argument, pulling the case together. And to underscore the title's ironic nature, the evidence suggests it's a response characterized more by chaos than control. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 8, 2020
The most shocking scenes speak for themselves, the ones in which Americans deride, upbraid and physically attack one another over the wearing of masks. That’s when Totally Under Control functions not as a polemic but a mirror, and the picture isn’t pretty. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 7, 2020
Subsequent docs will surely tell a different story, after survivors have risen up and confronted the individual they deem responsible — and Gibney et al. want this film to be instrumental in that solution. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeOct 7, 2020
If the film's title is an ironic use of Trumpian bluster, it also accurately represents the movie itself, which is about as far as you can get from Michael Moore-style agitprop while still having a red-blooded interest in this country's continued existence: The filmmakers avoid insulting a politician who deserves anything they might wish to sling at him, opting instead to let facts speak for themselves. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Simon HouptOct 14, 2020
You might be ready to throw a rock through your screen. Now it would be cool if Gibney could turn his attention to how the Canadian provinces messed up, too. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 13, 2020
Matters of objective science and empirical observation have now become so mired in partisanship, authoritarian narrative and conspiracy blather that even a film this judicious and straightforwardly informative feels doomed to reach no further than its own self-selected constituency. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonOct 13, 2020
Totally Under Control will become a useful document for the study of this pandemic in its eventual aftermath. It’s a bit too surface-level to be completely satisfying, but it was enough to overwhelm and upset me so much that I had to turn it off several times to decompress. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnOct 7, 2020
The movie assembles a whirlwind of whistleblowers and disease experts to break down each step of the timeline, lacing it together with smooth editing and ironic music cues that makes the overall experience both absorbing and frustrating, though not surprising in the least. Read full review
72
PolygonJesse HassengerOct 13, 2020
Working with fellow directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, Gibney has delivered a swiftly paced chronicle of history in the making, rich in both immediacy and uncertainty. Read full review
70
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergOct 13, 2020
It elevates voices who sounded early alarms about the virus and whose warnings were lost in a din of complacency, incompetence and political calculation. Not all of these interviewees or their messages have broken through to the public consciousness. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsOct 15, 2020
Totally Under Control is very much in control: It makes the whole of this crisis feel explicable. That proves frustrating. With the tragedy of the pandemic still ongoing, and thus still fresh, it also proves gratingly impersonal. Read full review
60
The GuardianCharles BramescoOct 7, 2020
All said, there are less educational ways to raise your blood pressure for two hours, and the masochistic Twitter-refreshers nourishing themselves with a steady drip of maddening headlines will have plenty to fume over. Starting with the sniggering title, this torturous rehashing of yesterday’s history all seems to be for them. Read full review
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