If Michael Haneke should die before he wakes, I pray the Lord his soul to take, along with this half-baked sequel to his magnificent Amour (2012).

| Apr 3, 2020

From its ingenious start to the nifty end, Haneke brings the viewers a full circle to this significant truth.

| Jul 12, 2018

The film remains interesting, if not particularly eye-opening, until it reveals how the characters are related. Then it becomes the sort of sardonic chronicle of upper-middle-class discontentment that Claude Chabrol did better with less portentousness.

| Mar 15, 2018

Beautifully photographed, well composed, but disappointingly superficial.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2018

Haneke modus operandi is to withhold information from the audience for as long as possible, forcing us to do our own investigative work. His admirers will no doubt rise to the challenge and should be amply rewarded.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 15, 2018

Formally Happy End is a crafty piece of work, but as a social critic Haneke is less convincing than ever.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2018

"Happy End" is an art film in the classic sense - ambitious, provocative and hard to shake off.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 15, 2018

Happy End will likely go down as a minor film from a major filmmaker, which is enough to make it worth your while if you can take the emotional hit.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 8, 2018

There's an implicit social critique here, as there often is in Haneke's work.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 7, 2018

Haneke's technique is almost provocation, and it proves a fascinating intellectual exercise. But while you can admire the construction, you can't live in it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 18, 2018

Happy End finds Haneke back in far more familiar terrain, operating in a wickedly disapproving vein.

| Jan 11, 2018

If you think the title is anything but a grim joke, you don't know Haneke.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 11, 2018

The result lacks the tenacious bite of [Haneke's] finest work, and one can think of more difficult targets for his unerring aim than the moral indifference of the rich.

| Jan 8, 2018

Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke has made many a masterpiece. Sadly, his latest isn't one of them. Yet this cinematic poke in the eye about an upper class family imploding still exerts a perverse fascination.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 4, 2018

A potent director's inevitable self-pastiche, Happy End suffers from the absence of Haneke's usual quest for humanity within perversion.

| Jan 3, 2018

It's not enough. It's not drama. It's not cinema. It's an endurance test, and there's no reason that anyone should take it.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 29, 2017

Old Haneke is back with a vengeance.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 22, 2017

Can't we have a little more life in a movie about death?

| Dec 21, 2017

If we're to read anything into the diseased privilege on display, we should assume Haneke is talking about much more than just one family. This is a state-of-modern-Europe morality play.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 21, 2017

If "Happy End" is something of a bad-seed nightmare, it turns out to be an unpredictable one, marked by unexpected flashes of warmth, sympathy and blistering humor.

| Dec 21, 2017