89% In the House

All Critics (70) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (62) | Rotten (8)

The film treats imagination-and talent-in certain hands as an almost mystical force.

Ozon and the script move a little too far afield and hold on a bit too long as the film approaches its end. Still, "In the House" has enough trippy truth to it to grab your interest and shake your mind.

It's fiction about life that becomes fiction that might be life - and the viewer happily dives in.

The expected punch line... never materializes, so I guess this must be a drama after all.

Savor In the House for its meta-exploration of adolescence, class resentment and suppressed desire, but don't expect much more.

The seductions of storytelling drive "In the House," a cleverly structured comic thriller rich with narrative trickery and macabre humor.

Provocative, playful, entertaining and audacious, In the House is a writer showing us the inner workings of writing, complete with its power to subvert, to imagine and to deceive

Occasionally too clever for its own good, the film may go one step too far, but Ozon manages the hybrid of genres beautifully and ultimately it is his superb cast that sells the nuances and the concept

A sly, stylish blend of melodrama and suspense that's also a cunning commentary on the seductiveness and danger inherent in storytelling itself.

Director/scriptwriter Francois Ozon knows his Hitchcock well. He employs him effectively, but the clutter is his own.

An almost perverse delight, an egghead thriller that slyly shell-games its truer purpose as an inquiry into the construction -- and deconstruction -- of fiction. Scratch deconstruction: Make that tear-the-house-down demolition.

It's partly real and partly a fable, full of events that might have happened or could never have happened, with intrigues that defy us to take them seriously.

In the House is a structurally solid thriller that is both inventive and absolutely seductive in nature.

Inviting photography and a relentless pace complement Claude's unfolding narrative, but the big thrills are in the deftly drawn characters...and the incisive satire...

A slick psychological thriller that veers into dark comedy the more absurd it gets, "In the House" demonstrates the dangers of addiction -- not to sex or drugs, but to story.

Captures why we do what we do, and the extent to which stories reflect both the writer and the reader.

It's amusing and unexpected, capturing the compulsive spirit of writing with wit and attention to mischief that keeps it unpredictable to the very end.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_house_2013/

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