Valhalla Rising Reviews
Lessons of Darkness
Mikkelsen verifies that, even without saying a word, he's an unnervingly unhinged presence.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
LarsenOnFilm
A mad meditation on the primeval nature of man, faith and survival, this is Apocalypse Then, and then some.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Less Braveheart than Aguirre, The Wrath of God, this evocative Viking tone poem contemplates the convergence between violence and religion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Top CriticIt's a chilly, often slow, uncompromisingly harsh film, but Refn's images will sear your retinas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
A Nordic odyssey straight down to Jerusalem
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Nick's Flick Picks
I appreciate Refn for pushing against conventions of rhythm, photography, subject, color, and form, and I don't mind that Valhalla Rising lacks a story so much as I question its reliance on enigmatic hints of some grand, over-arching abstraction.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Film Freak Central
Aguirre as conceptualized by Jim Jarmusch and executed by Terrence Malick.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Boston Phoenix
This is Aguirre, the Wrath of God, with the despondency jacked to 11.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
You sometimes wish Refn's gift for Ridley Scott-level mayhem had won the battle over his much iffier Werner Herzog leanings.
| Original Score: 3/5
It's a trip into a primordial world and primeval sensibilities, and if you're looking to shake off the mall-movie blahs, there are few better places to look.
Filmcritic.com
a viking-adventure-cum-acid-trip
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
AV Club
Like a John Milius film reduced to its pure, masculine essence and shot through one of Alejandro Jodorowsky's lens filters.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Examiner.com
Valhalla Rising sticks with you, partially because of its pounding score that sounds like an earthquake rumbling in your ears and because Refn insists on treating the situations in a realistic fashion.
Matt's Movie Reviews
Nihilism reigns in the gorgeously shot, art house Viking horror film Valhalla Rising.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Boxoffice Magazine
While Valhalla Rising is too challenging to expand Refn's North American audience, it will continue to cement his world master status to serious specialty film fans.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
EmanuelLevy.Com
The gifted Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) gives a muscular performance in Refn (Pusher trilogy) brutal viking epic tale, set in Scotland.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Lots of movies about the Middle Ages can do the mud and blood -- though we sure see a lot of both here -- but in this movie it's like Refn has ripped you out of time and dropped you there.
It's Herzog deconstructed and reconstructed, amped up and slowed down -- like the way '60s band Vanilla Fudge used to take Top 40 hits and drag them out for most of an album side.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
When it comes to crazy, violent, semidelirious, testosterone-laden, proto-Viking tales about a mute visionary one-eyed warrior who breaks skulls, Valhalla Rising is pretty great.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
It feels like a Black Sabbath song come to visual life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
