The characters in the film are fictionalised but based on the accounts of real survivors; fine to protect their identities, but dubious to deliberately twist the narrative to create additional sympathy.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 29, 2018

It's a grim, startling, and immersive experience, but without the historical rigour of Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday or the comforting heroics of United 93.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2018

The film is competent, disturbing and even, whisper it, propulsive. In a way that no film about the real and recent murder of 69 children and their summer camp helpers should ever be.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 26, 2018

Utøya: July 22 has pockets of great power along the way, but it's an uneasy watch in ways it both does and doesn't intend.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2018

[Director Erik] Poppe's "one take" shooting style traps his protagonists in a continual present.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 25, 2018

The effect is as scalding as you would expect - a stark and heartbroken monument on screen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2018

There's something quite ghoulish about Poppe's fictionalisation of unspeakable horror.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 23, 2018

Utøya - July 22 is hardgoing, as it should be - there was no solace in this situation, and the film mirrors the terror, turning us all into these kids' parents.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 22, 2018

It's unclear whether Utøya - July 22 wants to inform or empathise, but in the event it's a self-regarding and misguided piece of exploitation.

| Mar 13, 2018

"U - July 22" cuts through so much of the contemporary cant around gun violence, around white nationalism, around xenophobia, around the politicization of historical tragedy.

| Feb 21, 2018

Fortunately, the gimmick pays off more often than not.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 20, 2018

Erik Poppe's Utøya July 22 is a visceral, brutal, yet heartfelt and earnest movie, which imbibes the innocent bewilderment and horror of its young characters.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2018

"U - July 22" is designed to be as immersive as it is exhausting, and largely succeeds ...

| Feb 20, 2018