Having already picked up the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where it screened during Director’s Fortnight, ‘Blue Ruin’ already had some hype when the press screenings were announced. But now that the critics have had a proper look, the “classic American revenge” story has been reviewed to the tune of a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Blue Ruin'Blue Ruin' hits cinemas tonight, May 2

It’s “Essentially a lurid revenge story but filtered through an arthouse sensibility, peppered with stillness and deglamourised violence,” according to Leslie Felperin of The Guardian, while Walter V. Addiego notes, “The filmmaker works with economy and has a knack for creating a sense of foreboding, which is good because the plot is simply a working out of the old saw that violence begets violence,” in his review for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“This hard-boiled, unironic revenge thriller is held together by a mesmerising lead performance from Macon Blair,” write Sophie Monks Kaufman for Little White Lies. And for Time Out’’s Tom Huddleston, “It's a taut, unflinching first act ... But as the bodies pile up and the plot circles in on itself, that beautifully constructed web of suspense begins to unravel.”

The film becomes a gruesome spree-cum-meditation, with a vein of black humour that betrays a touch of the Coen brothers, “ writes Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph. “It’s scaled and structured rather like their 1984 debut, Blood Simple. There’s nothing Saulnier does better here than unveil his premise and bring the siblings together for their handful of scenes, but his film remains deftly shot and dynamic to the end.”

You can check out the stylish violence and intriguing plot for yourself really soon if you live in the U.K or Ireland, as Blue Ruin hits cinemas tonight, May 2.

Watch the trailer for 'Blue Ruin' here