Metacritic Movie Ratings
Beyond the Hills Reviews

A sample of reviews from critics across the country.

• 90

  out of 100

  Village VoiceScott Foundas

  The haunting final image suggests how quickly such stories can be lost...which makes Beyond the Hills, above all else, a powerful and necessary act of reclamation.

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• 88

  out of 100

  Chicago Sun-Times

  Beyond the Hills is an arthouse film from Romania, yet, in its slow, lurching progress toward a tragic exorcism, it is a stylistic nephew of America's "The Exorcist."

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• 88

  out of 100

  Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips

  Of all the movies culminating in a rite of exorcism, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's remarkable Beyond the Hills stands alone.

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• 80

  out of 100

  Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern

  It's tempting to see Beyond the Hills solely as an indictment of religion, but the film is more ambitious than that. Ignorance and superstition aren't confined to the convent; people in town, including the cops, drop casual references to witchcraft as if it were part of everyday life. The broader subject is possession by primitive ideas.

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• 70

  out of 100

  The Hollywood Reporter

  Beyond the Hills is less fun than any film about lesbian nuns and their psychotic ex-lovers ought to be. But it is an engrossingly serious work, and confirms Mungiu as a maturing talent with more universal stories to tell than those defined by Romania’s recent political past.

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• 60

  out of 100

  VarietyJustin Chang

  Observing the situation at an icy remove, Beyond the Hills never builds the palpable menace and pressure-cooker anxiety of "4 Months," and its dramatic progression feels obvious, even predictable, by comparison.

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See all Beyond the Hills movie reviews at Metacritic.com