The film had a disastrous opening weekend with many critics asking what went wrong?[4] In a review for Verdens Gang, Jon Selås said "there is no seriousness or ambition in 'Pax'."[6] For NRK P3, Birger Vestmo wrote "Everything feels so hopelessly constructed: the lead-heavy script, the rigid characters, the embarrassing dialogue, the extreme coincidences and the improbability that make my eyes roll"[7] Despite the film being marketed as the Nordic region's first disaster film, and featuring just about all of Norway's movie stars, critic Maria Moseng described it as "artistic suicide".[8] Ingunn Økland said "When a movie tells you exactly what to feel, it becomes almost impossible to feel just that."[9] For Adresseavisen, Terje Eidsvåg described the movie as "Obscene drama so loaded with trauma that it becomes embarrassing."[10] The Dagsavisen critic said the film contained many examples of "pompous bullshit suffered by suffering actors, in a vain attempt to pretend that at least someone knows what they are doing" and nominated it as the worst film in Norwegian history.[11]