Mute review roundup: What the critics are saying about the latest Netflix movie

'An over-designed but otherwise uninspired slice of sci-fi noir'

Netflix’s next big-budget science fiction movie has landed, Mute, the streaming service no doubt hoping the Duncan Jones-directed movie will avoid the negative reviews received by both Bright and The Cloverfield Paradox.

Unfortunately, the initial consensus is not looking good, the first batch of reviews praising the visuals — with multiple comparisons to Blade Runner — but criticising the pacing, plot, and unbalanced handling of weighty subject material, many commenting on the way Mute handles a subplot about paedophilia.

Set 40 years into the future, Mute follows Alexander Skarsgård’s Amish muted bartender who traverses Berlin in search of his missing girlfriend.

Perhaps the most scathing reviews come from The Independent and The Guardian, who both awarded the movie one-star, along with The Telegraph, who gave two-stars, adding: “Jones conjured intimacy on the surface of the Moon, but in the crowded streets of futuristic Berlin, there’s no real feeling.”

Hollywood trades were also negative, Variety’s critic calling Mute “an over-designed but otherwise uninspired slice of sci-fi noir” and The Hollywood Reporter saying: “The handsomely downbeat atmospherics overwhelm its themes of love, parenthood, crime and punishment.”

Below are a handful of snippets from reviews. Mute is available now on Netflix.

The Independent – Christopher Hooton – 1/5

When Paul Rudd's antics and the kidnapping storyline finally combine, it's in a woefully confusing way that manages to be both boring and melodramatic while giving paedophilia one of the most curious cinematic treatments on record.

The Guardian – Charles Bramesco – 1/5

Watching Jones passively bob in the deep end of his imagination, a viewer longs for the compulsory baseline competence of the big studios – anything but the blandness masquerading as future cult bait.

The Telegraph – Ed Cumming – 2/5

The script has none of the reserved cool which made Moon so appealing. In the circumstances, Skarsgård might feel he escaped lightly with a part that involves almost no speaking. The plot hangs on relationships which simply don’t ring true. [Paul] Rudd, in particular, is poorly cast, lacking the menace his role demands. Jones conjured intimacy on the surface of the moon, but in the crowded streets of futuristic Berlin, there’s no real feeling.

Variety – Peter Debruge

an over-designed but otherwise uninspired slice of sci-fi noir — a stock missing-persons mystery in which a wordless bartender goes searching for his girlfriend through the sketchy near-future Berlin underworld.

The Hollywood Reporter - Sheri Linden

All the genre bells and whistles, however finely crafted, get in the way of the story’s undercurrents of longing and grief.

Uproxx – Amy Nicholson

I should be clear that Mute isn’t a good movie. It manages to be both bizarre and boring. While I admire Jones’ inventive details like a bowling ball that looks like a giant die, or a severed cow cartoon shilling for steak, or the way cell phones have advanced to where people don’t acknowledge they’ve answered a ring before screaming hello into a startled room, the film simply looks cheap.

LA Times – Kevin Crust

Jones reportedly conceived of the film years ago. However, as the story evolved and took on more emotional themes he never found the right balance between the sentimental and the hard-boiled. As resonant as the personal may potentially be, it gets lost in a quagmire of influences.

GameSpot - Michael Rougeau

Mute is a bad joke about itself, the movie version of a Weird Al Yankovic song (an “Amish Paradise” sequel set in the future?), only if the filmmaker wasn’t aware it was supposed to be a parody. It’s like Mute underwent so many rewrites that the scenes and characters no longer match up – or like it’s a first draft that never underwent a single edit, though considering how long Jones was trying to get this made – 12 years! – the former seems more likely.

GQ – Tom Philip

Doing the talking here instead are two black market American surgeons, Cactus Bill and Duck (Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux), who make good use of their chemistry and comedy bona fides to bring some effective, unrehearsed levity to some corners of Mute. That is until a dreadfully tasteless (and needless!) subplot ruins that, too. If there is redemption to this film, it comes in Rudd and Theroux’s easy partnership and some impressive set design work. But that’s about it.

The Wrap – Robert Abele

Ultimately, it’s hard to sense the same director who embedded us so thoroughly in the carefully heightened atmosphere of philosophical adventure that was “Moon.” Here, a Sam Rockwell cameo glimpsed in a news clip detailing a Lunar Industries imbroglio clues us in that “Mute” is set in the same world as that earlier film. But the connection doesn’t extend, regrettably, to the filmmaker behind both movies.

ScreenRant – Sandy Schaefer

Mute is a middle of the road sci-fi/Noir offering that resembles a lower-grade version of the actual Blade Runner sequel that came out last year, Blade Runner 2049. Jones spent several years working on the project, but the final movie result feels like an intriguing concept that he simply wasn’t able to realize as fully.