On the review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes,
Totally Under Control holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average of . The website's critics consensus reads: "
Totally Under Control does a commendable job of distilling current events into a clear-eyed overview that's as engaging as it is enraging." On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Ann Hornaday of
The Washington Post gave the film a score of 3/4 stars, describing it as an "incisive, lucid and infuriating critique of the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic", and concluded: "Should open-minded viewers decide to watch
Totally Under Control, they're likely to feel snapped awake, as if from a long, horrifying national trance." Simon Houpt of
The Globe and Mail also gave the film a score of 3/4 stars, and described it as "a totally enraging documentary about the Trump administration’s flaccid response to the coronavirus emergency in the U.S."
Kevin Maher of
The Times gave the film a score of 4/5 stars, writing: "It's sobering, often indecently gripping material that, in broad strokes, confirms widely circulated impressions of the Trump White House as a nest of kleptocratic science-bashing vipers." Danny Leigh of the
Financial Times gave the film a score of 4/5 stars, describing it as "A definitively American story - what happens when the desire to be free from government extends to government itself, as nearly 8m people sicken." Shirley Li of
The Atlantic wrote: "Viewers may have grown numb to the constant churn of distressing news and learned to stomach the administration’s failure to contain the virus. But
Totally Under Control refuses to look away, and being reminded of how many warnings went unheeded is unnerving." Brian Lowry of
CNN described the film as "in some ways, a greatest-hits collection of Trump administration failures and missteps pertaining to Covid-19". Sam Adams of
Slate said that the film told "the story of a disaster that everyone saw coming and let happen anyway." Charles Bramesco of
The Guardian gave the film a score of 3/5 stars, describing it as a "damning, if frustratingly incomplete, timeline of a government ill-equipped to deal with a deadly pandemic". K. Austin Collins of
Rolling Stone wrote that the film "makes the whole of this crisis feel explicable... With the tragedy of the pandemic still ongoing, and thus still fresh, it also proves gratingly impersonal", but added: "It’s a fine placeholder for a real reckoning, a nicely-plated appetizer, a studious demonstration of how to read, collate, and repackage the news." ==References==