Noel Murray: the Arkansas-based A.V. Club critic behind The Bunny Game review

Overview

Noel Murray is an American freelance film and television critic and pop culture reporter, based in Conway, Arkansas, whose career has run for “over thirty years” (Southeastern Film Critics Association; Book Hero). A key contributor to The A.V. Club and co-founder of the cinema website The Dissolve, his writing on TV, movies, music, and comics has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone (Book Hero). He is the critic behind the most-quoted verdict on The Bunny Game: Adam Rehmeier’s film was “brutal” and “repellent,” he wrote — but “far from artless, or pointless” (The A.V. Club).

This profile is about the Arkansas-based critic — not the same-named Irish golfer who plays PGA Irish Region events for Massereene, who is an entirely different person (Irish Golf Desk).

A thirty-year career in pop-culture criticism

Murray got his start in journalism writing for the award-winning alt-weekly Nashville Scene, and went on to become one of the most prolific contributors to The A.V. Club, where his archive spans film, TV, and music coverage across decades (SEFCA; The A.V. Club). He was one of the co-founders of The Dissolve, the late, lamented cinema website, and his work now appears regularly in The A.V. Club, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Week, with additional contributions to PRIMETIMER (SEFCA; PRIMETIMER). He lives in central Arkansas, where he covers film, music, and television (PRIMETIMER). In 2024 he co-authored LOST: Back to the Island: The Complete Critical Companion to The Classic TV Series with Emily St. James — a 352-page Abrams Press hardcover revisiting the ABC show’s legacy through essays, episode summaries, and cultural analysis, twenty years after its 2004 premiere (Book Hero). The 352-page scope matters: this is a full-length work of entertainment criticism from two veteran LOST recappers, not a recap blog in hardcover — a natural endpoint for a critic who built his career episode by episode (Book Hero).

The Bunny Game review

Murray’s 2012 A.V. Club review of The Bunny Game opens by taking the term “torture porn” “more literally than usual”: director Adam Rehmeier’s film stars Rodleen Getsic as a street sex worker “shackled, stripped, and beaten by weathered trucker Jeff Renfro” — “and that’s pretty much the entire movie” (The A.V. Club). He praises the craft underneath the content: shot in stark black and white “with extreme angles, intense close-ups, and jumpy editing,” the film “means to have the quality of a nightmare, and at that it succeeds,” with a relentless atonal electronic score matching Getsic’s near-constant screams (The A.V. Club). He also reads the film socially, noting that Rehmeier “connects Renfro’s punishment of Getsic to her pre-abduction life of prostitution, when her regular customers also frequently treated her like a slab of meat” (The A.V. Club). But he concludes it exposes the limitation of the “‘How hardcore can you get?’ aesthetic”: after its first 20 minutes, “The Bunny Game has done just about all it’s going to do — no matter how much Rehmeier varies the compositions” (The A.V. Club). He even notes, with dry disapproval, that the DVD extras include a “self-congratulatory” commentary track in which Rehmeier and Getsic claim “every burn, cut, and punch literally happened” (The A.V. Club).

Murray’s outlets at a glance

Outlet / role	Documented role	Source
The A.V. Club	Key contributor; film, TV, music critic	Book Hero; SEFCA
The Dissolve	Co-founder	SEFCA; Book Hero
Nashville Scene	Career start (journalism)	SEFCA
The Los Angeles Times / New York Times	Current outlets	SEFCA; PRIMETIMER
Rolling Stone / The Week / Vulture / Entertainment Weekly	Regular outlets	SEFCA; Book Hero
PRIMETIMER	Contributor	PRIMETIMER
Abrams Press (LOST: Back to the Island, 2024)	Co-author (with Emily St. James)	Book Hero

Frequently asked questions

Who is Noel Murray the critic? Noel Murray is an American freelance critic and pop culture reporter based in Conway, Arkansas, with a career spanning over thirty years. He is a key contributor to The A.V. Club, a co-founder of the cinema website The Dissolve, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Week, Vulture, and Entertainment Weekly.

What did Noel Murray say about The Bunny Game? In his 2012 A.V. Club review, Murray called Adam Rehmeier’s film “brutal” and “repellent” but “far from artless, or pointless.” He praised its stark black-and-white photography, extreme angles, and jumpy editing as achieving “the quality of a nightmare,” while arguing the film exhausted its “How hardcore can you get?” aesthetic after about 20 minutes.

Is Noel Murray the film critic the same person as the golfer? No. The critic is an Arkansas-based American writer. The other Noel Murray is an Irish golfer who plays PGA Irish Region events for Massereene, documented across Irish golf coverage. They are different people, and this profile covers only the critic.

What is LOST: Back to the Island? A 352-page critical companion to the ABC television series LOST, co-written by Noel Murray and Emily St. James and published by Abrams Press in 2024. It revisits the show’s themes, lore, and cultural impact twenty years after its 2004 premiere through essays, episode summaries, and cultural analysis.

Timeline

• 1990s — Murray begins in journalism at the Nashville Scene (SEFCA).
• 2006 — An established A.V. Club contributor, reviewing DVD-era music documentaries under his byline (A.V. Club archive).
• 2012 — His A.V. Club review of The Bunny Game becomes the film’s most-quoted critical assessment (The A.V. Club).
• 2024 — LOST: Back to the Island, co-authored with Emily St. James, published by Abrams Press (352 pages, hardcover) (Book Hero).
• 2022–2024 — Listed as a PRIMETIMER contributor with recent TV pieces, alongside LA Times and NYT work (PRIMETIMER).

What we could not verify

• The exact start year of Murray’s career at the Nashville Scene and the launch/closure years of The Dissolve were not stated in any full-read source, so no years are asserted for either.
• No verified source in this pass gave a birth date or any personal-life details, so none are claimed; the profile covers only documented professional facts.
• The A.V. Club review page’s extracted text carried no visible dateline; 2012 is given from its content (a DVD/Blu-ray-era review with commentary-track details), not from a read dateline — flagged rather than over-asserted.
• Whether Murray holds any current formal title (e.g. critic-at-large, editor) at the A.V. Club or elsewhere was not established; the profile describes him as a freelance contributor.

Sources

• The A.V. Club — The Bunny Game (tier2; the full review; authorship confirmed via page schema metadata)
• Southeastern Film Critics Association — Noel Murray (tier2; professional bio: outlets, Nashville Scene start, The Dissolve co-founding, Conway Arkansas base)
• The A.V. Club — Noel Murray, Author at AV Club (tier3; outlet author archive corroboration)
• PRIMETIMER — Noel Murray (tier3; contributor bio, recent outlets, central Arkansas base)
• Book Hero — LOST: Back to the Island by Noel Murray and Emily St. James (tier3; book facts from publisher-supplied copy: Abrams Press 2024, 352 pages, co-authorship, 30+ year bio)
• Irish Golf Desk — Noel Murray tag archive (tier3; disambiguation: a same-named Irish golfer playing PGA Irish Region events)