"Guaranteed to send [audiences] either straight to the exit or into paroxysms of rapture, "Sombre" is an impossibly arty, totally noncommercial construct that ends up, for those prepared to stay the course, as a surprisingly creepy look into the tortured mind of a serial killer... Even when the viewer's patience is being stretched to the limit by the underlit, out-of-focus, minimalist photography, there's a growing feeling as time wears on that Grandrieux's movie is exploring areas hardly touched by mainstream killer-thrillers — such as complicity between victim and murderer, and the sense that the killer instinct is present in all humans but simply suppressed or only in vestigial form in "normal" people." - Derek Elley, Variety