Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Nothing will surprise Zvyagintsev fans more than discovering how funny the film is, as the helmer and co-writer Oleg Negin extend the darkly satirical streak they began with Elena.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
The heart and soul of Leviathan is Serebriakov's Kolia, who carries deep sorrow in his eyes and on his shoulders, even as he fends off defeat for longer than you'd imagine possible.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
This is really a movie about a feeling, or really, about a lack of feeling - about what happens to people in a dominant culture of bullying and abuse, when they have no escape except what's inside the next bottle, no options except not waking up.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Leviathan is another downer, but it's considerably looser and livelier than its predecessors, verging at times on black comedy.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
For all his failings, Kolya, in the movie's terms, is a natural man, and so his fate in fighting his implacable enemies in the state has a mythic resonance. The movie would not be as powerful as it is if he were haloed.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Andrei Zvyagintsev's fourth feature is a thriller, a black social comedy, and a thinly veiled swipe at Putin's regime in one tidy package.

Name : Graham Fuller / Alias : New York Daily News
A bleak, beautiful, and bitterly funny parable of post-Soviet Russia.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
What emerges is a Putin-offending critique of how the power-abusing state and the power-worshipping church collude to create millions of Jobs.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The movie expands, breathtakingly, into mordant humor, impenetrable mystery, ferocious satire and classic tragedy.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Bleak and relentless as well as impeccably made, biblical in its name as well as its moral outrage at the powerlessness of the individual in the face of unchecked authority, "Leviathan" is dealing with nothing less than the current state of Russia's soul.

Name : Farran Smith Nehme / Alias : New York Post
Director Andrey Zvyagintsev's film combines allegory, brutal melodrama, black humor and strikingly beautiful compositions, each frame dense with meaning.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
This is a whale of a movie, grotesque and a little bloated but impossible to ignore.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
'Leviathan' is structured as an intimate suspense story, with a Job-like hero on whom all sorts of hell will be visited by an uncaring state.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Despite flashes of absurdist comedy from some secondary characters, the movie closes around you like the fist it protests and laments.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Andrey Zvyagintsev puts contemporary Russia, as up-to-the-minute as Putin and Pussy Riot, under the microscope. Leviathan is a stupendous piece of work that transcends language and borders.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Filled with a desolate beauty.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Many conversations start and end around a kitchen table. Why, then, should we be left with such an impression of grandeur, limitless suffering, and wrath?

Name : Firman T. Nugraha / Alias : Amazon.com
This movie will be amazing, because of the new animation technology that enhanced th

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's a confident thriller suffused with dread that builds suspense without breaking until it's too late to turn back - with a few jump scares thrown in for good measure.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Joel Edgerton's feature-length directorial debut is a pleasant - or pleasantly unpleasant - surprise, hitting its genre marks in brisk, unfussy fashion and raising a few hairs on the back of your neck along the way.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Officially, this is a blank-from-hell movie. But Edgerton has remixed the formula.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Edgerton's touch as a director and writer is fluid - he eerily holds our attention, like Hitchcock holds a door for Tippi Hedren.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
This indie pulse-raiser is more of a stealth shocker than an overt one, even if the twisted payoff is telegraphed to anyone paying attention.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Edgerton - who also wrote The Square and the story for The Rover - exploits Bateman's smarty-pants persona to chilling effect; he's the rare triple threat who's more valuable behind the camera than in front of it.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Underneath it all, "The Gift" is a merciless critique of an amoral corporate culture in which the ends justify the means, and lying and cheating are O.K., as long as they're not found out.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-'80s/early-'90s yuppies-in-peril dramas. before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke's Cache.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
A satisfying directorial debut from writer, producer and actor Joel Edgerton.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Just when we think we know where The Gift is going, we're surprised. And then surprised again.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
A dark and ultimately quite nasty psychological thriller from actor/writer/debut director Joel Edgerton, who manages to yank the carpet out from under his audience a couple of times.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Clever and atmospheric, the film has enough twists to keep the average viewer guessing.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
One of the many gifts conferred by The Gift is the unaccustomed pleasure of feeling like putty in the hands of a first-rate storyteller.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Edgerton seems to have pulled "The Gift" right out of a time capsule from 1992.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
At heart this is a three-character chamber piece. And Bateman, Hall and Edgerton are three very interesting actors showcased in a confident directorial debut.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
Nothing here feels cheap or hasty, which is why the horror, when it comes, is all the more chilling and grim. Slick, sharp and terrifying, "The Gift" is a truly brilliant thriller - and, one hopes, the first of many features from Edgerton to come.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
More than anything, Edgerton's script and direction demonstrate a keen understanding of tension and what puts an audience on edge.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A disturbing drama that twists its outsider-from-hell story into something more unique and unexpected than its marketing campaign might imply.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Edgerton isn't above a hoary jump scare or two, but he otherwise tackles his Cape Fear premise with a degree of technical and dramatic intelligence.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
It touches on notions of trust, the male ego and forgiveness, but Edgerton doesn't overturn any new stones.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"The Gift" stretches things a little too much for it to be a first-rate thriller. Still, among second-rate thrillers, it's one of the best.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The Gift starts out like so many other thrillers before it - with an attractive, well-to-do couple purchasing a big new house - and then beats its own, uniquely tense and twisted path from there.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
[An] expertly crafted exercise in guilt, ambiguity and revenge.

Name : Daisy Bowie-Sell / Alias : Time Out
A darkly unnerving psychological thriller.