Reviews for this film from our members:
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Saulnier and his best friend/star Blair have created an intriguing, inept antihero but the old crime that haunts him and the family behind it are so crudely drawn that the film turns into a genre exercise.
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: What sets Blue Ruin apart is its centre: Dwight is a frankly dreadful avenging angel. He’s almost completely inept, and the film ekes darkly funny laughs from the moments when Dwight fails to do the very things that people in these kinds of movies always seem to know how to do.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: There’s something extraordinarily ordinary about Saulnier’s approach that cuts right through the thin skin of vengeance.
- Rob Hunter @ Film School Rejects
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Rather than relying on a heavy doses of expository dialogue, Blue Ruin allows the ominous score and the visceral imagery to speak for themselves.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A riveting Southern gothic revenge thriller — a suspenseful reinvigoration of the genre — that seems to be over in the first 20 minutes, and then finds horrific new places to take you.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Blue Ruin is riveting stuff, a study in nitty-gritty tension, punctuated by silence and spurts of brutal violence, and the filmic rule of “showing over telling” right down to its unsparing finale.
- Don Lewis @ Film Threat
- Jamie S. Rich @ Oregon Live
- Excerpt: Saulnier’s script avoids exposition, never pausing to orient the audience. Instead, the filmmaker reveals each bit of truth only as necessary, turning an otherwise straightforward plot into an increasingly dense mystery.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Revenge, it is said, is a dish best served cold. In Blue Ruin, the new thriller by Jeremy Saulnier (Murder Party) that made a bloody splash at Cannes last year, the dish may be cold, but it is served by warm, sweaty hands that fumble and spill and make a sloppy mess of things.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: A joy to anyone who is utterly bored with the Hollywood revenge fantasy of Jason Bourne and the ridiculous Taken series with Liam Neeson. While those movies are disposable fantasy, Saulneir’s film is about the messy, bloody business of revenge as it might happen to the ordinary person.
- [New – 11/6/14] | Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
- Norm Schrager @ Meet In the Lobby
- Excerpt: … an exemplary suspense thriller
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: One of the most talented cinematographers of his generation, Saulnier relies heavily upon his purposeful framing and focus to guide the audience. Blue Ruin is an amazingly gorgeous film to behold, and it is even more impressive that the images signify more than just mere eye candy; the cinematography establishes and defines interpersonal relationships, while soliciting tension and intrigue.
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A tight, taut, suspenseful little thriller…an effective series of tension-building sequences punctuated by outbursts of violent action.
