In the House Reviews
Slant Magazine
It's buoyant and titillates, striking that distinctly Ozonian balance between the beautiful and the sinister, but it doesn't resonate.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Top CriticLuchini's dependable deadpan goes a long way toward making the puzzle pieces snap pleasingly into place, but as with most such endeavors, In the House is about its own construction and nothing more.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
'In the House" promises to be a social satire with a flash of Hitchcockian menace, but gradually it turns into a routine thumb-sucker on reality versus fiction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Financial Times
Ozon, for all the prettiness of his comic and visual grace notes, runs out of ideas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Little White Lies
Acrobatic wordplay only hides the vapidity so much.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The dexterity of the actors and their director is not quite enough, and as "In the House" accelerates, it also starts to sputter, piling on incidents and revelations that cause its web of implications to unravel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Film4
Fact and fiction collide messily in a film that will be a treat for Ozon fans, which boasts an impressive breakthrough performance from one-to-watch Ernst Umhauer.
In the House creates something far more original than the same old heart-pounding exercise.
HeyUGuys
A script with razor sharp wit, effective and unobtrusive direction and fine performances from the key leads all help ensure this is one of, if not the finest of Ozon's films to date.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Montreal Gazette
Even though the buildup doesn't yield the anticipated payoff, [In the House] remains a slick, artful and highly entertaining ride.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Empire Magazine
Ozon weaves another spellbinding tale that mingles the real and imaginery with terrific effect.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
What Culture
Francois Ozon's interplay between narrative and meta-narrative girds this smart if occasionally too-precious drama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Movie Nation
A little kinky, a little creepy, and quite clever and literary.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The Skinny
With its exploration of voyeurism and manipulation, In the House covers similar territory to Ozon's earlier Swimming Pool, but is distinguished by its crafty sense of humour.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Birmingham Post
An ambitious, beautiful looking movie with the underlying theme that if you want to get on in life sooner or later you have to start to experience it for good or bad.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Ozon keeps sliding between genres ("Now we are in bad farce," scolds the teacher) to explore what really interests him - the creative process itself.
Darkly funny and utterly compelling, it's arguably the best teacher-student movie since 1999's Election.
A celebration of storytelling's power.
Daily Express
It's a little too wordy and under-plotted for my liking but stylishly done.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
