Metacritic reviews

Haneke demonstrates profound insight into the essence of human behavior when all humility is pared away, raw panic and despair are the order of the day, and man becomes more like wolf than man.

In today's digital bog of empty light and marketing deceptions, this is what early-millennium Euro art-film masterpieces feel like--lean, qualmish, abstracted to the point of parable but as grounded as a gravedigging.

Haneke has become known as a dour modern master of cinematic pain, and in this movie he scrubs civilization down to the root level.

Haneke is still a masterful director, and his authority carries this well-acted and attractively shot account of a family from an unnamed city trying to survive in the sticks after an unspecified catastrophe.

This is one of Haneke's least powerful films, although the excellent cast is interesting to watch.

Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.

Haneke's images are so bold and riveting and the characters' emotions are so raw that the lack of a few details doesn't matter.

You can feel frightened and disturbed by this movie without being especially moved by it.

Moviegoers expecting a conventional sci-fi fantasy will be disappointed; Haneke never explains the vague disaster, nor does he offer any definitive solution.

In the somewhat muted lead role, Huppert really is a marvel.