Grotesquerie; Surviving October 7th

“Grotesquerie is a slow burn, but it is intriguing. It touches on reality TV, addiction, guns, faith and the mundanity of marriage. It may be too much, all at once, and as is often the case with Ryan Murphy shows, it strives to find a balance between genuine provocation and being shocking just because he can be. Even so, these opening episodes suggest it is worth persevering with. This ambitious horror may well find its feet.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Grotesquerie has too much of everything. A sort of unofficial companion piece to Murphy’s long-running American Horror Story, the David Fincher-esque chiller features beheaded corpses, boiled babies and a tableau of dead bodies arranged like the Last Supper. Perhaps the likeable Travis Kelce will make it more bearable. For now, this crass serial killer thriller feels dead on arrival.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“The footage we see – while graphic and extremely disturbing – does not convey all the dimensions of the atrocity that occurred that day. There is barely any mention of the Israeli government’s reaction to the 7 October attacks – in fact, the film provides almost no context about the conflict in the region. Some may consider this a problematic omission, but the documentary’s focus is very clear: it tells the story of these Israeli citizens – utterly defenceless in the face of Hamas’ indiscriminate onslaught – and it does so unflinchingly, exhaustively and movingly.”
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian

“This blistering documentary is the work of Yariv Mozer, who also made last year’s exceptional The Lost Eichmann Tapes. Although a caption acknowledges its catastrophic human cost, the bloody aftermath of October 7 is not his subject. Nor are the staggering security failures. His subject is terror: raw, pure, uncut, as it happened and as it is traumatically relived by those who saw it, felt it and were somehow hardwired to document it on smartphones.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph

“What followed was 90 minutes of the most difficult television you’ll have seen in a very long time. Of the 3,500 people at Nova, 400 were either killed or kidnapped. Watching the footage unfold, it’s a miracle so many survived.”
Roland White, Daily Mail