Cutter" received critical acclaim. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix said the episode demonstrated how effective the creators of Breaking Bad are at manipulating the emotions of their viewers. Sepinwall described the story as "remarkably simple" but the execution as extremely effective, and he called the amount of screen time dedicated to Gus calmly changing his clothes before and after killing Victor "a move so ballsy and so brilliant I actually started giggling the second time they did it". Time magazine writer James Poniewozik said the episode demonstrated how effective Breaking Bad can be even with a minimal amount of dialogue, such as Gus' silence during his scene in the lab, and Jesse's wordlessness throughout the episode as he processed what he had done to Gale. He also praised the color scheme of the blood-red meth lab as an illustrator of Walter and Jesse's descent into hell. Entertainment Weekly writer Ken Tucker said of the episode, "Its eloquent silences, its breath-taking pictorial compositions ... these are pleasures that transcend 98% of television's usual attempts at dirty realism or fashionable pessimism". Kim Potts of TV Squad called Gus' killing of Victor "one of the more jarring scenes in Breaking Bad history". The Faster Times writer Craig McQuinn called it "one of the most intense episodes I've ever seen", and said it solidified Gus' standing as "one of the greatest TV antagonists I've ever seen". Matt Zoller Seitz of Salon.com compared the filmmaking in "Box Cutter" to that of works by Alfred Hitchcock and the Coen brothers, and called the best example of television's ability to "take an elastic approach to narrative and let certain incidents or moments expand to fill up most or all of an episode" since "The Suitcase", an episode of the television series Mad Men. Seth Amitin of IGN called it a minimalist, deliberately paced episode but said it was never boring due to the excellent acting, dialogue, and suspense which illustrates "just how quickly this show lost its innocence". He also said the subplots involving Skyler, Hank, and Marie kept the episode's pace well. Los Angeles Times writer Emily VanDerWerff praised the performance of Aaron Paul despite his almost complete lack of dialogue throughout the episode and felt the script raised interesting contrasts between Walt, who acts impulsively and rash while captured, and Gus, who seems calm and in control. However, she said it felt like Victor was killed