Enter the Void 2009

Tom Long, Detroit News: Hallucinogenic, dazzling, depressing, daring and not entirely successful, "Enter the Void" is obviously out to blow some minds. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: [Noe is] using pure cinema and not just cheap exploitation tricks to make an impact. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: A strong contender for both the artiest drug movie and the druggiest art movie ever made, Gaspar Noe's tour de force of forced perspectives and free-form grief is, in every sense of the word, a trip. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: It takes some adjustment, but Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: As chowderheaded as some of its underlying pretensions are, the movie's still an astonishing work of cinema, alternately brilliant and disgusting, naive and inspired, tedious and sublime. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: It's a dark and commanding vision, reaching for the heavens even as it wallows in the muck. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Director Gaspar Noe proved a shock poet in Irreversible. In Enter the Void, he's a shockingly tedious show-off. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: Enter the Void displays a dizzying virtuosity with the cinema of altered states. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: "I hated that" will be a common refrain among people leaving showings of Enter the Void. Don't be surprised, though, if you find yourself still thinking about the movie the next day. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: From the rapid-fire, purposely unreadable opening credits to the final baby POV shot of a birth, this is a dazzling and brutal exercise in cinematic envelope-pushing. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: An accomplished, daring, even great film. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: If you have the stomach and the endurance, it represents a revolutionary break from ordinary movie storytelling. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: Gaspar Noe has followed up his 2002 Irreversible, an unwatchable exercise in provocation, with Enter the Void, an unbearable exercise in provocation. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: One-hundred-proof unfiltered weirdness. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: If you yourself are stoked for a lurid, oversexed, stupid-with-Freud Midnight Movie extravaganza -- a trip to El Topo via Mulholland Drive -- there are worse ways to spend 2 1/2 hours. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: In visual terms, it's a whiz-bang marvel of swooping and soaring camera work and psychedelic imagery, lit by the gaudy fluorescence of Tokyo's seamier nightclubs. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: You have to admire Noe's ballsy vision and loopy execution, and the way he sucks you into this world with such a bold fusion of sound and image. Read more

Rob Nelson, Variety: Not clever enough to be truly pretentious, Noe's tiresomely gimmicky film about a low-level Tokyo drug dealer who enjoys one long, last trip after dying proves to be the ne plus ultra of nothing much. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: A mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead, Enter the Void is addictive. Read more

Jen Chaney, Washington Post: [It's] certainly an immersive experience that's decidedly difficult to shake. The problem is that it's also the most excruciating sit in recent cinematic memory. Read more