The Seventh Continent (Der Siebente Kontinent) (1989)

Drama about everyday life in an average middle-class family.

Critic Reviews

Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Intelligent, hard-hitting, nightmarish family drama that's based on a true story and told in a repetitive clinical style that reflects the subjects' anomie.
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
Haneke's impressive feature theatrical debut offers a chillingly bleak look at a family and its descent into barbarism as a result of alientaion and disengagement from life.
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
Confirms -- through its narrow portrait of life as unrelentingly bleak -- its own gloomy cynicism.
Derek Smith, Cinematic Reflections
A stunning examination of the effects of emotional isolation and the inability to communicate in the modern age.
Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine
Family kills itself, director exploits it for dour ironies. More at 11.
Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine
Michael Haneke could be cinema's Debbie Downer, if only he had any sense of humor.

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Stephen M

Bruising and depressing, the Seventh Continent builds and builds to a shattering climax with a sense of monotony that few have ever achieved. Its power lies in its ambitious decision to show us what has happend and let us draw our own conclusions, or make up our own reasons for why it… More
Bruising and depressing, the Seventh Continent builds and builds to a shattering climax with a sense of monotony that few have ever achieved. Its power lies in its ambitious decision to show us what has happend and let us draw our own conclusions, or make up our own reasons for why it went the way it did.