67
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMan Bites Dog defines audacity. An assured, seductive chamber of horrors, it marries nightmare with humor and then abruptly takes the laughter away. Intentionally disturbing, it is close to the last word about the nature of violence on film, a troubling, often funny vision of what the movies have done to our souls.
- 89Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovIs it a comedy? A documentary? An underground gore-fest? Man Bites Dog, the first feature film from Belgian director Rémy Belvaux, is all of these and much more, a ghastly, shocking and explosive debut with all the genuinely ruthless ability to disturb as an oily blue-barreled revolver jammed in your mouth. And it's funny, too.
- 80Time OutTime OutThis spoof fly-on-the-wall documentary is funny, scary, provocative, and profoundly disturbing...Purely on a gut level, it may offend; but as an exploration of voyeurism, it's one of the most resonant, caustic contributions to the cinema of violence since Peeping Tom.
- 80VarietyLisa NesselsonVarietyLisa NesselsonAn offbeat, darkly hilarious portrait.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliObviously not a movie for everyone, Man Bites Dog boasts graphic displays of murder and rape. There's very little of the human body -- inside or out -- that isn't shown at one time or another during the course of this movie. Nevertheless, if you do venture to see Man Bites Dog, you would have to be made out of stone to miss the visceral, sardonic impact of a highly-unusual film.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineIn addition to its views on the glamorization of serial murder, MAN BITES DOG offers a wicked send up of notoriously talky French filmmaking--the most unbelievable thing about the movie's narrative conceit isn't that the crew is calmly shooting a vicious serial murderer as he goes about his business, but that they've chosen to follow the unbearable Ben. His loathsome, self-absorbed monologues are torment worthy of the ninth circle of Hell, but with a cup of black coffee and a supply of smelly cigarettes he could pass at any cafe for a run-of-the-mill French intellectual.
- 70The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasIt’s a sick piece of work—I felt like a heel for watching it, yet I couldn’t look away, either.
- 60Harrowing, visceral and definitely not for the squeamish, the fake documentary approach is an effective and unsettling tool, and while the film never quite reaches the horrific heights of John McNaughton's chilling Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, it is, for better or worse, difficult to forget.
- 40The New York TimesStephen HoldenThe New York TimesStephen HoldenA grisly sick joke of a film that some will find funny, others simply appalling. On one level, it is an in-joke about movie making, since one reason given for Ben's rampage is the need to steal enough money to make the documentary. On another level, the film satirizes real-life television shows that purport to take viewers into the thick of the action. It suggests how profoundly the presence of the camera affects events, and thumbs its nose at the very notion of documentary objectivity.
- 40Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonThe film's depicted cruelties (the rape and disembowelment of a woman, a pillow suffocation of a boy after Poelvoorde has chased the terrified tyke through the house) grossly overshadow their satiric purposes.