Critic Reviews

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  Even bit turns from Miriam Margolyes and Elaine Paige aren't enough to make "Blind Revenge" much more than a stagey misfire.

• David Jenkins, Time Out

  With its unlovely DV aesthetic and cheesy midi-synth score, the film has clearly been put together on the cheap. Yet it's also severely lacking in the fundamentals.

• Michael Nordine, L.A. Weekly

  It's like turning on a lamp in a room that looked just fine by candlelight.

• Simon Crook, Empire Magazine

  Conti, an actor as sturdily reliable as a Volvo, delivers a brittle, curmudgeonly turn, but the story's stiff and the denouement as ordinary as a piece of A4.

• Kevin Maher, Times [UK]

  A Closed Book is directed by Raoul Ruiz, a "revered member of the European avant-garde" who decided to tackle "the Anglo-Saxon tradition" - with execrable results.

• Xan Brooks, Guardian [UK]

  Eccentric Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has rifled through the Hammer bag of horror tricks and come up with a relentlessly silly, oddly diverting yarn.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  The film feels less like a thriller than an aesthete's tease, and one with a disappointingly stiff, Europuddingy flavour.

• Chris Prince, Sky Movies

  Watching this two-hander feels very much like sitting through a play and although it's a well-acted one, A Closed Book's amateur charms may be lost on moviegoers expecting a lot more flash for their cash.

• Philip Kemp, Total Film

  It's all rather mannered and the final denouement is disappointingly banal.

• Jeremy Aspinall, Radio Times

  The cat-and-mouse plot fizzles out long before its lacklustre finale, which is a pity as Conti is watchable in an all-too-rare starring role.

• Grant Rollings, Sun Online

  A Closed Book should be locked, shut in a safe, then thrown into the sea so it is never seen again.

• Leo Robson, Financial Times

  Events gradually turn Gothic, with things going bump in the night, as they often do in films containing blind characters or set in country houses, so here the fun is doubled, and it all culminates in a final twist that has to be seen to be disbelieved.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  The plot is stagey, and the denouement ridiculous, but its sheer unlikeliness is what also keeps you hanging in there.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  One of those enjoyably awful films that's actually quite good fun providing you don't take it remotely seriously. Still terrible, though.

Read all 14 critic reviews