Kritiken

Friedkin brings a corresponding visual energy to the verbal thrusts and parries of Crowley's dialogue, though at times this seems like a busy front to conceal an anxiety over appearing relaxed and at home in the milieu. If the script's flurry of tossed-off [homophobic slurs] no longer has the shock value it may once have had, such attractions as... Friedkin's handling of a cloudburst that drives the party indoors give The Boys in the Band a shelf-life beyond its original groundbreaking function.

[It's] perhaps the most timely film Friedkin ever made and a quintessential example of a director whose interest in opening up and maintaining spatial situations takes on self-sustaining proportions. When Steven Soderbergh recut Raiders of the Lost Ark in 2014, he called Steven Spielberg's visual prowess "high level visual math shit," a description that could be applied to Friedkin's film as well, albeit on a much smaller scale.