amy r. handler of film threat gave the film 5 (of 5) stars: "grenzfurthner's outspoken, swiftly flying little flick is the must-see indie of 2014, as far as i'm concerned. everyone, be they intellectuals, political-types, or simply those that love great blackly comic, sensual horror, will fall madly in love with 'die gstettensaga: the rise of echsenfriedl'. see it, as soon as possible, and i promise you'll never be bored at the movies again." net culture magazine furtherfield calls it a "hackploitation art house film" that reimagines "the makerspace as grindhouse", a "retro-futuristic post-cyberpunk adventure in the tradition of cinema grotesque". gstettensaga's "fascinating cinematic pastiche is more than just a firework of rhizomatic intertextuality, a symptom of the depthlessness of postmodern aesthetics or excessive enthusiasm for experimentation in the field of form. in their infamous 1972 book "anti-oedipus", gilles deleuze and félix guattari have identified the technique of bricolage as the characteristic mode of production under 'schizophrenic' capitalism, a facet triumphantly magnified by the filmmakers." hacker magazine interprets the film as a call to class consciousness for hackers: "setting the film in the future forces hackers to confront a choice: will we let ourselves and our ingenuity be recuperated by all-consuming market forces? or will we come together - as is our potential - as the class that ends capitalism's conquest to secure all means of production?" pop culture theorist stefan tiron comments that he is "overenthusiastic about gstettensaga - because it distracts the hollywood canon, because it is such a genre bender, a satiric h bomb, a horror movie and ex-auction house vaudeville going for the unexpected dialectical turns of current history, and leading us into the untrodden and definitely outrageous wastelands that could be populated by the likes of "surf nazis must die", "escape from new york", "steel dawn" or "america 3000"." jason scott sadofsky calls it "the best kind of low-budget filmmaking", it is like "watching an absurdist play by beckett, if beckett decided to work on the mad max franchise." v. vale was "struck by the beautiful imagery and sound, mythological plot dimensions" and richard kadrey calls it a "mad post-collapse satire of information culture and tech fetishism, in a weird sort of melding of "stalker", "network", and "the bed-sitting room"." political scholar sebastian vetter interprets the satirical dimension of the plot: "the old world has been reduced to ashes by the earlier beacons of hope (china stands for maoism and google for alternative culture). all that remains are stretches of land governed by idiocy and dialects. as marxists, the people from monochrom know that only the revolution can free us from capitalism. and yet the revolution is no more alive than unicorns are." film critic bonni rambatan says that the film "forces us to think deeper about the fact that much of today's romanticized revolutions often go eerily hand in hand with the development of digital capitalism. few films today, if any, manage to do such a feat." german online magazine telepolis praised the eclectic, multi-layered humor.the film has a fan following in the hacker and tech community.