AllMovie

The debut film of prolific actor Tim Roth, The War Zone takes no prisoners in its depiction of a family torn apart by incest, but the more it progresses, the more the viewer begins to feel as victimized as the members of the household. Expertly photographed but unremittingly bleak, The War Zone uses its scenes of sexual molestation as shock and not much else, while the picture has such an irritatingly affecting tone it's hard to reach out to any of the characters or care much about their predicament. Also, this is one of those films where someone delivers a line and the audience must wait several beats for a response, presumably to create dramatic tension. But in a work so superficially sensationalistic and callous, this overly theatrical device only compounds the film's ineffectuality, as well as Roth's seeming lack of interest in the consequences of the people he depicts.