Nocturama

2016

2h 10m

Mystery & Thriller

List

82%

50 Reviews

Tomatometer

58%

250+ Ratings

Audience Score

After planting bombs in the streets of Paris, a group of disillusioned young people spends a tense night holed up in a high-end department store.

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Critics Consensus

Nocturama uses an unorthodox perspective and repellent protagonists to offer sobering statements about modern society -- and deliver uniquely suspenseful entertainment.

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Wolfgang G

Nocturama ist ein französisch-belgisch-deutsches Thriller-Drama von Bertrand Bonello. Eine Gruppe von jungen Erwachsenen, die sich überdrüssig von der Gesellschaft fühlen, planen einen terroristischen Anschlag, nach der Tat treffen sie sich in einem Luxuskaufhaus… Bertrand Bonello inszenierte die Geschichte mit minimalen Dialogen, und die Charaktere sind größtenteils in Bewegung und geben der Geschichte eine Tiefe und eine gewisse Schönheit… Die Charaktere haben den Anschein eine Aufgabe zu erfüllen und funktionieren wie ein Rädchen in einem Uhrwerk… Nocturama ist ein sehenswerter Film…

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/09/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Vapid, self-indulgent anti-establishment hipsters plot to murder lots of people and think they are saviors of some sort. Plenty of faux-intellectual anti-capitalism garbage we see thrown around all the time now. Tell me, how's that alternative worker's party working with Putin and the Ukraine? Or China's surveillance state and silencing religious and ethnic groups?

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

01/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama is certainly an ambitious project that attempts to introduce numerous characters who all have a particular participation and task to complete in order to pull-off a terror attack on the political and corporate establishments throughout Paris. Bonello's juggling of the characters and construction of events is hugely impressive indeed as he also introduces them hiding out in a shopping mall and indulging in the very consumerist and capitalist constructs that they seemingly proclaim to abhor. I wasn't entirely sure about the mixed messages but I found it sharply satirical and a biting polemic on our current socioeconomic system.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/19/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Boring and pointless. Not much of a plot, and characters with no motivations. Only good part of the film was watching all the characters get iced in the end. Skip.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

09/27/18

Full Review

Audience Member

While it's a slow start, Nocturama provides a rewarding film not through its plot nor its characters, but in its ironic and pointedly empty treatment of them.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/02/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Would have been much higher rated not for the weak ending that detracts from the moments leading up to. Incredibly close to being a certified masterpiece yet falls short with a lazy ending that offers none of the intricacies of the previous two hours.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

07/05/18

Full Review

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Bertrand Bonello

Director

Finnegan Oldfield

David

Vincent Rottiers

Greg

Hamza Meziani

Yacine

Manal Issa

Sabrina

Martin Petit-Guyot

André

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Lauren Carroll Harris

Guardian

Though director Bertrand Bonello's exacting vision of a Parisian terror plot is as stylised and tensely structured as a psychological thriller, the drama plays out with unnerving realism.

Oct 9, 2017

Full Review

Michael Phillips

Chicago Tribune

Much like Bonello's previous film, "Yves Saint Laurent," "Nocturama" revels in pure experience. But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.

Rated: 2.5/4

Sep 7, 2017

Full Review

J. R. Jones

Chicago Reader

You're in for the most suspenseful film to hit town all year.

Rated: 4/4

Sep 7, 2017

Full Review

Vadim Rizov

Filmmaker Magazine

To some (arguable) degree a shallow movie with a flippant/trivializing attitude, rejecting the default gravity granted its subject...it’s also a highly recommended, original and (this may seem like the wrong word, but it’s true) fun work.

Jan 17, 2023

Full Review

Dustin Chang

ScreenAnarchy

If the film is a parable of today's chaotic world, it's a weak one.

Jul 17, 2020

Full Review

Craig Hubert

Hyperallergic

Little is said about the particular ideology of the film's main characters... It's this abstraction of meaning, the way the film refuses to prescribe an interpretation to the events unfolding, that makes it challenging and, ultimately, rewarding.

Feb 5, 2020

Full Review

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Synopsis

After planting bombs in the streets of Paris, a group of disillusioned young people spends a tense night holed up in a high-end department store.

Director: Bertrand Bonello
Screenwriter: Bertrand Bonello
Production Co: Rectangle Productions, Arte France Cinema
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: French (France)
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 8, 2017
Runtime: 2h 10m

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