A woman looks for a way out of her abusive relationship.
Paddy Considine’s writing and directing feature debut is a grim, bleak but ultimately moving affair.
Approach Considine’s brilliant directorial debut with caution. It’s a pitiless, fearsome beast that will hammer you in the gut, hard. And Olivia Colman will blow you away.
A great deal more than a misery memoir on film, this character study is as gripping as any hardboiled thriller, delivering emotional content that’ll stay with you for a long time. Highly recommended.
Gripping, sorrowful, and incendiary, this is admittedly a tough sell for audiences experiencing a depression of their own. Would it help if I said it's one of the best movies I've seen so far this year? Because it is.
More British miserablism but well acted.
See Tyrannosaur for the acting – just maybe don’t go expecting a great deal else.
Vivid, bruising and electrifying but also possesses a sentimental undertone that some may question.
Tyrannosaur is a fearsome debut but it’s subtler than the title suggests — and the film’s uplifting moments make it easier to recommend than the average British misery flick.
It's hard to watch at times, though made with an intensity and artfulness you never for a moment doubt.
Tyrannosaur is far from a love story, but it is not a simply a hate story, either; it is certainly a very impressive debut from Considine.
Dog lovers may be advised to give Tyrannosaur a miss, but there’s much to appreciate for admirers of bold, challenging cinema.
The characterization is too thin but the cast do fine work and the drama grips.
It’s no easy watch, but the sickening violence brings about Joseph’s redemption and makes for a shocking twist.
Tyrannosaur inhabits a closed-in atmosphere of desolation – though not despair – that some will find compelling, others oppressive. But it's a confident, honest work that touches a raw nerve. As they say in the blurbs: "Bleak, harrowing, unforgiving – go see."
It's a brave, tough, truly compassionate film that threatens to bite any hand of comfort held out to it prematurely. Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan are excellent as the orphans of this terrifying storm, and Eddie Marsan is frighteningly beyond the pale as the husband from, and on his way to, hell.
Considine builds the film around Joseph and Hannah’s mutual bond of helplessness and violence, but his overbearing instinct for crude melodrama – right down to the shirtless pitbull-owner whose presence facilitates an entirely phony finale – undercuts anything honest and true in the performances.
Paddy Considine: 'Making this film felt like an exorcism'
Is Tyrannosaur 'poverty porn'?
Why Tyrannosaur topped the BIFAs
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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