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Styx

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Germany, Austria, Netherlands
·
2018

1h 34m

Director Wolfgang Fischer
Starring Susanne Wolff, Alexander Beyer, Inga Birkenfeld, Gedion Oduor Wekesa
Genre Drama
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Successful doctor Rike plans to use her vacation time to fulfill her longtime dream of sailing out to Ascension Island alone. But after a storm off the coast of North Africa, she sees a badly damaged, severely overloaded refugee boat nearby and is forced to face the refugee crisis head-on.

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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

70

Screen Daily by

Offering little in terms of exposition and even less when it comes to dialogue, Fischer’s sophomore effort develops character and, eventually, unsettling moral questions entirely through action, playing as a more consciously political companion piece to J.C. Chandor’s similarly taciturn All is Lost.
70

The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij

Admirably, the director maintains the documentary illusion throughout, opting for a third act that finds exactly the right, understated tone, neither glorifying Rike’s role, nor underplaying the character’s more than obvious compassion.
83

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

A blunt, breathless, and astoundingly unsentimental morality play that’s told with the intensity of a ticking-clock thriller, Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx is every bit as ominous as its title suggests, and far less fanciful.
80

Empire by Ian Freer

Styx is a gripping sea adventure that mixes thrills and spills with thoughtfulness and compassion. The MVP here is Wolff, who superbly etches emotional disintegration alongside amazing physical prowess.
90

Variety by Jessica Kiang

This is "All Is Lost” with a spinning moral compass and a topical dimension that proves even more gripping than its brilliantly achieved visceral action.
70

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

Its dizzying strength is as a visceral journey, a detour from the privileged freedom represented by a horizon to the tragic limbo of displacement, an ocean that’s both a confinement and an abyss.