Anticristo

"Danish director's overly fecund imagination overwhelms a slight but visually splendid story. (…) von Trier is working in a full-out symbolic vein here (…), but alas, the film medium inevitably carries with it, like an albatross, a heavy charge of realism. The film's most successful thematic confrontation is that between frail reason (…) and the uncontrollable forces of emotion and mystery that emerge victorious. Another powerful idea, that nature is cruel and vicious and completely antithetical to human welfare, seems to align von Trier with the German visionary director Werner Herzog. ("Nature is Satan's church,"(…). In any case, all the ideas of the film are so extravagantly and feverishly expressed that one fears that von Trier, always working on the edge, has finally become unhinged.  "

— Peter Brunette de Hollywood Reporter

"Veteran provocateur Lars von Trier must have been feeling taken for granted, because he goes all out for our attention in baroque horror essay Antichrist. The film could be described as a shocker in more ways than one (...). Von Trier deserves credit for audacity, not least in making a genuine two-hander: apart from the couple’s sporadically glimpsed child, Gainsbourg and Defoe are the only players, other humans appearing with faces digitally blurred."

— Jonathan Romney de Screen

"What genre does Antichrist belong in? It is a practical joke, an exquisitely malicious hoax, a superbly engineered wind-up – disguised as a film. (…)Von Trier's uncompromising facetiousness and giggling insincerity allow you to sit back and appreciate his technique, of which there is a good deal.(...)Gainsbourg got the acting prize at Cannes for this film, but it's Von Trier who gives the most uproarious performance(...). If you want a bracing evening of pointless controversy in the cinema, then buy tickets. Whatever the price, it'll be a snip.  "

— Peter Bradshaw de The Guardian

"Before the prologue is done, Antichrist has delivered slow- motion sex, explicit penetration shots, and the cruel demise of an innocent infant. This is not, announces the deranged scrawl of the title font, for the feint-hearted. What it is, in the subsequent story of a grieving couple who unleash their bleakest impulses upon each other, is a fearless attempt to articulate the darkest imaginings that permeate all relationships. (…) Antichrist is deftly engineered to disturb.  "

— Kevin Maher de The Times

"(…) Le fond d’Antichrist est soit trop obscur, soit insupportable. Bien moins finaud que les grands maîtres dont il invoque les mânes, Von Trier peint un atroce tableau de la psyché féminine moderne."

— Olivier Séguret de Libération