Critic Reviews

Citadel is plenty scary: a bare-bones man-against-his-worst-fears white knuckler, shot through deep, menacing shadows.

[A] fresh, eerie twist on urban horror.

Citadel is stripped down and no-nonsense, fixating on Tommy's emotional and psychological struggles with an intensity that's harrowing.

I think Foy simply wants to deliver well-gauged terror and make a few points about personal responsibility and the need to overcome our fears. That he does quite well.

This is a basic story, simply and directly told by Irish writer-director Ciaran Foy. He doesn't try to explain too much, he doesn't depend on special effects and stays just this side of the unbelievable.

Writer-director Ciaran Foy skillfully taps into primal fears and urban paranoia to keep his audience consistently unsettled in Citadel, an intensely suspenseful horror-thriller.

The more that fright-flick conventions take over, the more the movie's recognizable and resonant human fears are dulled.

This spare first feature from the Irish filmmaker Ciaran Foy (drawing on his own experiences) has an atavistic pulse, evoking a decaying society where elevators fail and bus drivers cower behind mesh grills.

Foy's talent lies in suggesting horror, not delivering it.

A dispiriting horror cheapie whose monsters-in-the-projects premise plays out like an anti-welfare parable.