[9] 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.

"[10] 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."[11] 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.

"[13] 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.

"[16] 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".

[17] 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.