Metacritic reviews

The Kindergarten Teacher — the film as well as the character — yearns for different values, for intensity, beauty and meaning. Its sobering lesson is that the search for those things is most likely to end in madness, confusion and violence.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

Lapid’s approach is so cautious yet so ambitious, he manages to weave an engrossing narrative that -- despite some longueurs after the one-hour mark -- grows progressively intense.

Lapid’s thrilling use of the camera, the way his unbalanced frame and his imaginative staging work with the precision of his story, results in something new and genuinely unnerving.

The film's denouement is at once shocking and organic because it echoes a well-paced but nasty children's fable.

Always engrossing but also perplexing and offering little deeper than the obvious, “Teacher” still reps a new development in a striking, idiosyncratic director.

Israeli director Nadav Lapid uses a well-worn concept — a lonely little boy is taken under a teacher’s wing — to create a slow, creepy movie.

What primarily comes across is a film about squandered creativity that itself ignores and trivializes the creative process, pretending that child prodigies produce masterworks unconsciously, like a chicken laying eggs. That’s a poor lesson to impart.

The Kindergarten Teacher is too lackadaisical in its execution to be as profound as it thinks it is.

Slightly mesmerizing performances from Larry and young Shnaidman just manage to sustain interest in this quiet story. Even if it’s going nowhere.