Luke Buckmaster: Black Coal, Thin Ice review – a chilly, neo-noir thriller. In: The Guardian. 12. Juni 2014, abgerufen am 24. September 2014 (englisch): „The film is littered with suggestions that it’s withholding information, from the jarring way the plot moves – gradually and slowly, then quick and jolting – to the stubbornly secretive manner with which Diao stages some of his most important sequences. The final reel is visually interesting in ways nobody could anticipate; it is also smugly perplexing, as if the filmmaker took joy from the knowledge virtually nobody would understand it.“
