Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Gela Babluani, according to the film's sparse press kit, is only 26 years old but already knows more about suspense than some filmmakers learn in a career. Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: [Babluani] creates a fear so bottomless, a bad dream so plausible that its hooks tear into your consciousness. Read more
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: ... little substance and lots of fashionable cynicism. Read more
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Babluanis are brothers to pay attention to. Read more
Tasha Robinson, AV Club: In a way, 13 (Tzameti) is a nearly gore-free take on Hostel, another film ... about desperate attempts to survive in a place that's simultaneously culturally and geographically alien. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Demands to be seen for the juice it manages to wring out of its central gambit but mostly for the directorial career it hints is on the horizon. Read more
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: Although it's likely too stark for everyone, 13 Tzameti offers a mind-blowing experience for anyone willing to go along for the ride. Read more
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 13 (Tzameti) might seem allegorical, but it's too cynically concerned with what works as entertainment to offer larger truths about human existence. Read more
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: French art thriller 13 Tzameti has a literal hair-trigger premise, yet it's so lacking in human dimensions that it creates virtually no suspense. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: It may be smarter than Saw II or Saw III, but it's just selling a classier brand of sadistic voyeurism. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: You can almost smell the nervous sweat running down these men's backs. You can almost feel the damp. Read more
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The resulting jolts add up to one unforgettably surreal nightmare. Read more
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: The Georgian-born French director Gela Babluani makes an absorbing debut with this black-and-white thriller. Read more
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A tightly screwed shocker, a suspense tour de force that proceeds through a harrowing chain of events with alarming confidence. Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Easier to admire than it is to sit through, the French film 13 (Tzameti) is an exercise in stylish depravity that may one day be viewed as the debut of a great filmmaker. Read more
Rob Nelson, Village Voice: As a brutal metaphor for the global economy, 13 Tzameti takes care of business; its assertion that desperate means require desperate measures naturally extends to the hair-trigger world of genre filmmaking. Read more
Adriane Quinlan, Washington Post: The first film by a 26-year-old director (Gela Babluani) that feels like the worst of what a 26-year-old director could make. Read more