Viewers who enjoy a big rug-pull will want to keep an eye out for this one, as it essentially combines the surprise endings of several notable films into one all-encompassing “Gotcha!”
40
Time Out
Time Out
The filmmaker throws in a strangely irrelevant twist before he’s through, but despite a lavish dose of gothic style, The Condemned’s trek toward absolution is pretty familiar.
Although directed in effectively creepy fashion by Roberto Buso-Garcia, the film’s leisurely pacing and overall restraint will likely leave genre fans dissatisfied even as its lack of depth will turn off art-house patrons.
38
Slant MagazineSteve Macfarlane
Slant MagazineSteve Macfarlane
It adds up to a methodically bland, intellectually sluggish exercise in guilt-tripping that's nonetheless still more interested in its rich and sexy characters than the supposed unfortunates.
The Condemned is uncanny only in its resemblance to a television soap, with acting as flat as the lighting and scenes that end with the kind of cliffhanger moments that otherwise announce commercial breaks.
A good idea for a ghost story is dead on arrival in The Condemned, a would-be thriller whose intended horror-tinged chills register as ho-hum hokum.
25
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Condemned is nothing but a creaky façade.
10
Village Voice
Village Voice
Writer-director Roberto Busó-Garcia's Spanish-language movie is so tame and so completely boring that to advertise it as a horror film is to insult the genre.