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Bringing a woman's perspective to the table, Jenn Wright (Past the Popcorn) says "Apocalypto avoids a common trap that modern treatments of ancient cultures often fall into: portraying them overly reverently, as sober, deep, and rather bland and humorless. Unfortunately, Gibson has wandered too far on the other side, thrusting upon ancient Mayans the locker-room man-boy humor most often associated with low budget sitcoms and '80s frat-boy flicks."

Mainstream critics are conflicted—some are ecstatic about Gibson's virtuosic direction, while others are repulsed by the film's violence. David Ansen (Newsweek) says, "Once again [Gibson] returns to his favorite theme: nearly naked men being tortured. Repeatedly. Imaginatively. At great length. … The harder Apocalypto works to shock and excite you, the less shocked and excited you become, until you may find yourself beset by the urge to giggle."

Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times) acknowledges that Gibson's movie is about the moral decline of a culture, but he concludes that the film is "Exhibit A of the rot from within that Gibson is worried about. If our society is in moral peril, the amount of stomach-turning violence that we think is just fine to put on screen is by any sane measure a major aspect of that decline. Mel, no one in your entourage is going to tell you this, but you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. A big part."

But Anthony Lane (The New Yorker) argues, "Contrary to what his detractors say, I don't believe Gibson is roused by violence in itself. What lures him, in his dark remoldings of Catholic iconography, is breakage and restoration—the deeper and more foul the wounds, the more pressing the need to see them healed."

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