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91
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indieWIRE Eric Kohn
With a dense, often impermeable style and a mentally unstable protagonist, Simon Killer is like watching the disturbed anti-hero of "Afterschool" all grown up.
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90
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Village Voice
If Simon Killer's tragic drift is predictable, the seedy particulars still engross. And the storytelling is first-rate.
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75
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The Playlist William Goss
A noir-tinged, noose-tightening ordeal [that] confirms Antonio Campos, if not the entire Borderline Films outfit, as a filmmaker/team to be reckoned with.
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75
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Slant Magazine
The film has many elements of a thriller, but ultimately Antonio Campos's interest lies much more in profiling, yet never over-determining, his moody protagonist.
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75
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New York Post Kyle Smith
Writer-director Antonio Campos, making excellent use of the queasy rhythms of a percussive musical score, keeps piling up the dread as we wonder just how dangerous Simon can be to the women who keep taking pity on him.
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65
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NPR Scott Tobias
The film is frequently masterful, suggesting the turbulent inner state of an American sociopath who believes himself to be a good guy.
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50
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Chicago Sun-Times
A relentless and largely unrewarding descent into an ostensibly personal hell.
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40
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Time Out New York Keith Uhlich
Even at its most affecting, Simon Killer rarely seems like more than a cinema-du-Gaspar-Noé simulacrum. The languorous long-takes, dissociative sound design and strobe-light scene transitions meant to mirror this emotional con artist's skewed view of the world are anxiety-of-influence hand-me-downs through and through-viscera without vision.
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20
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New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Sort of “An American Psycho's European Vacation,” this indie dramatic thriller mixes sex and violence and still winds up dull.
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10
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The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy
This lushly and pretentiously made drama about a young American whose worst instincts are unleashed during a stay in Paris endeavors to entice with details of the seedy underworld of La Pigalle but is a turn-off in almost every respect.
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