Septien (2011)

Critic Reviews

• Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

  It's all a labored sort of strange, like someone forcing himself to have a bad dream.

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  There's an unkillable something at the heart of "Septien," an artistic ambition that's not calculated or cynical, that feels homegrown American but is thoroughly resistant to totalitarian spectacle and the manufactured tides of mass opinion.

• Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

  This low-budget paean to indoor plumbing and rampant facial hair doesn't unfold so much as unravel.

• Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

  Never the same movie for five minutes straight, Septien can't sit still.

• Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter

  An erratic narrative pastiche lacking stylistic coherence.

• Dennis Harvey, Variety

  Septien proves the paths of "weird" and "interesting" do not always intersect.

• Brent Simon, Shockya.com

  A unique slice of Southern Gothic that trades in low-level mischievousness, Septien is the ultimate chameleonic cinematic experience -- it is chiefly what one wishes it to be, based on their mood, and interpretation of its rhythms.

• Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix

  Tully has forged an original independent work of spirit and intelligence, perhaps the best American feature so far in 2011.

• Ethan Alter, Television Without Pity

  The film takes advantage of its striking setting, but unfortunately the characters at its center gradually reveal themselves to be less interesting than they initially appear.

• Alison Willmore, AV Club

  The setup and storyline are absurd, but the angst underneath is as earnest as a campfire confession.

• Sam Adams, Time Out New York

  As intriguing as the movie is, there's the sense that its free-associative story line has been dredged up from its maker's unconscious and recounted without filter or shape.

• Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

  The film lingers on prolonged moments of foreshadowing that offer little apart from the studied weirdness with which many low-budget wannabe oddities traffic.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  An oddball backwoods curio, that takes us off the beaten path art-house style.

• Fred Topel, Screen Junkies

  I must be really getting into the festival circuit because now I'm totally open to a movie like Septien.

• David D'Arcy, Screen International

  Tully is comfortable enough with his own material that he doesn't overplay gags. His parodies are odd enough to have a comic freshness, even in the well-traveled field of gothic mockery.

• Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film

  The combination of its backwoods horror-style set-up, an excellent score from Michael Montes - at once childlike with a fairytale edge, yet quietly menancing - and the off-kilter but nice-as-mom's-apple-pie characters gives the comedy its disturbing edge.

Read all 16 critic reviews