Michael Reviews

A strange and agonizingly engrossing drama despite its repellent subject.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Michael does have undeniable moral purpose. It forces us to ponder the way society chooses - another easy option - to comfortingly reclassify such perpetrators as monsters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Haneke without the soul, and if you've seen enough of that man's pictures, you can maybe perceive how unsettling the idea of a soulless Haneke sounds.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

Intentionally unnerving from the first moments, it's a hard movie to watch, but it's also fantastically, agonizingly suspenseful.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Mostly the picture is blank, a credible series of scenes that invite us to make of it what we will.

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A brave, unavoidably distressing debut from Markus Schleinzer, sensitively acted and directed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Michael has been forged in the Haneke mould, treating its incendiary material with an aloof, banalising calm and withholding any overt judgment or moral standpoint.

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I can't recommend anyone shares 90 minutes of their life with Michael.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

There is a film to be made, grim and explorative, about paedophile abduction. Michael isn't it.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

Schleinzer could hardly have chosen a more difficult subject, but he treats it with an unnerving simplicity, shorn of sensationalism or obvious moral cues.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The film is not merely a chilling insight into the day-to-day banality of evil, but also an unbearably suspenseful and tense drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Impressively directed and superbly written, this is a powerful and chilling drama with a terrific central performance from Michael Fuith.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

There are no easy conclusions here - no explanations. Events unfold with a random, even black comic abandon.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

As horrifying and hard to watch as you'd expect a paedophile's-eye view of life to be. It's neither sensationalist nor trite, and the questions it asks are intelligent and thoughtful.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A mild-mannered Austrian paedophile imprisons a ten-year-old boy in his basement in Markus Schleinzer's chilly drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

This chilly, matter-of-fact portrait of a pedophile is as hard hitting as any tabloid hysteria. No solutions or explanations are offered, but sometimes nightmares are beyond comprehension.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The Banality of Evil gets full cinematic treatment in this skillfully made but unpleasant film.

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A courageous essay on the power of the childlike and the horror of dysfunctional adulthood.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10

Haneke fans will be impressed by this rigorous, finely acted study of a suburban paedophile. Skillfully avoiding sensationalism, it nonetheless compels the viewer to contemplate the banality of evil.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A fly-on-the-wall study of the behavior of a pedophile, "Michael" is a horror movie made up small moments.

Full Review | Original Score: A-