The Playlist by Ankit Jhunjhunwala

This is rigorous filmmaking of the highest order, controlled and precise to the exclusion of anything extraneous —evidenced by its taut 100-minute runtime.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Saffron Maeve

With Misericordia, Guiraudie deftly strikes the balance between the playfully sacrilegious and the sociopathic, rounded out by a seductively bizarre cast of dwellers and clusters of puckered, corpse-fed mushrooms.

The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi

For all its morbid undertones and philosophical ruminations, Misericordia is neither a dirge nor a lofty symposium. Strange as it may be to say for a story that begins with a burial and then shatters after a heinous death, this is a supremely and surprisingly funny film, where humor gradually accrues a subversiveness not unlike desire’s own.

IndieWire by Ryan Lattanzio

What a miracle of a movie.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

Instead it’s a slippery, changeable parable about a particularly amoral cuckoo looking to feather a new nest.

The New York Times by Wesley Morris

Misericordia is film noir with the lights turned on. Even when its characters are working your nerves, it tickles. Guiraudie is playing those nerves like a harp.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia is an existential drama masquerading as a comedy masquerading as a thriller.

The Daily Beast by Nick Schager

A superb thriller that employs common genre devices for a canny and caustic rumination on right and wrong, love and lust, virtue and vice.

RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams

It’s not a hard movie to follow or fall for, as fans of Guiraudie’s earlier movies already know. He commands our attention even when his characters are either too ridiculous or too petty to be taken seriously.

Washington Post by Ty Burr

Even if such murky doings aren’t your cup of absinthe, the skill with which Guiraudie weaves his web is mesmerizing.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

This might suggest that Misericordia is ultimately a film with a message, and a more solemn one than we’re used to with Guiraudie. But any apparent clarity should be taken with a pinch of salt, the film’s meanings shifting as constantly as the erotic drives between the various male (and occasionally female) characters.

Collider by Jeff Ewing

It's a strong and highly watchable thriller that shouldn't be missed.

Slant Magazine

Misericordia finds Alain Guiraudie revisiting old standbys under a relatively conventional set of aesthetic strategies. Fortunately, the ideas roiling under the former wildman’s newly placid surfaces are as potent as ever.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

While it lacks the surrealistic and fairy-tale elements that distinguish many of Guiraudie’s films (among them Sunshine For The Poor, Time Has Come, and Staying Vertical), Misericordia is nonetheless pervaded by a casual dreaminess and a disregard for the strictures of realism that leads in some (intentionally) silly directions.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France, Guiraudie’s strange and sober new film does the trick.