89
Metascore
58 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichThe Power of the Dog sticks its teeth into you so fast and furtively that you may not feel the sting on your skin until after the credits roll, but the delayed bite of the film’s ending doesn’t stop it from leaving behind a well-earned scar.
- 100The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinThe film is often hard to watch, but Campion and her uniformly excellent cast leaven the discomfort with a constant sense of prickling intrigue around what precisely we are watching play out here, and how far the ritual will go.
- 100The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThis is an exquisitely crafted film, its unhurried rhythms continually shifting as plangent notes of melancholy, solitude, torment, jealousy and resentment surface. Campion is in full control of her material, digging deep into the turbulent inner life of each of her characters with unerring subtlety.
- 91The PlaylistTomris LafflyThe PlaylistTomris LafflyIt’s cinematic poetry, if there ever was one, bourgeoning in meaning the more you linger in its shadow.
- 85TheWrapCarlos AguilarTheWrapCarlos AguilarFor a movie that appears to stop and start as it shifts its focus a few times too many, denying us longer introspection into its most magnetic man-to-man rapport, The Power of the Dog thrives on having actors so submerged in the fiction that they are creating a reality. Their subcutaneous labor translates what’s unsaid into fleeting but telling gestures.
- 83The Film StageDavid KatzThe Film StageDavid KatzThe Power of the Dog has attributes that recall her past work but pleasingly seems––if not a new direction––that Campion is drawing upon a fresh skillset to best do this tale justice.
- 80The GuardianXan BrooksThe GuardianXan BrooksIt’s a brawny, brooding drama about the wreckage caused by men, beautifully framed in muted neutral tones as the camera circles the ranch-house with a deliberate, stealthy tread.
- 80Screen DailyJonathan RomneyScreen DailyJonathan RomneyIf The Power Of The Dog isn’t the absolute killer coup that Campionites might have hoped, this is her most thoroughly conceived, consistently involving drama for years: taken all in all, pretty much the full visual, dramatic and, indeed sonic package.
- 80Vanity FairRichard LawsonVanity FairRichard LawsonWhile the core narrative is plenty compelling in all its creeping dread and curiosity, The Power of the Dog is not too concerned with being about any one thing. The film’s secrets are revealed while new ones bloom into being. Life tumbles after life in the ecosystem of all of us, seething amid the dust clouds we can’t help but kick up.
- 70VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanAll of this should build, slowly and inexorably, in force and emotion. But for a film that’s actually, at heart, rather tidy and old-fashioned in its triangular gamesmanship, “The Power of the Dog” needed to get to a more bruising catharsis. In its crucial last act, the film becomes too oblique.