Metacritic reviews

The tone -- a combination of earnestness and gallows humor -- is strangely appropriate.

Ferocious and sometimes creepily funny, Bully is a raunchy suburban "Crime and Punishment."

Nothing new to say, and, in the end, no real point to make.

Clark denies his audience the catharsis, resolution and renewal of classical tragedy. The film reduces its viewers to helplessness, and I'm not sure that's its intent.

It feels like a peek into the closet of a pedophile and it's genuinely discomforting.

Like the recent "Baise-moi," Bully is a whole lot of shock and titillation trying to pretend it's saying something. Unlike the French import, however, there's no awareness of its own absurdity, nor anything for the audience to care about in the slightest.

Whatever his intentions, Clark, in his third outing as a director, has come up with a film that is seriously flawed.

The script is worse than slack, and despite its lurid premise, Bully doesn't have "Kids" tabloid immediacy.

A riot of sleazy camera moves, bad acting, and maladroit profane dialogue.

It's instructive to compare Bully with Jean-Pierre Ameris's "Bad Company," which tackles similar themes and manages to be explicit without stooping to cheap salaciousness. It's a genuinely disturbing film. Bully, in contrast, is merely disgusting.