Danish director Lars Von Trier’s much-anticipated return to Cannes has resulted – with some predictability – in controversy, as a screening of his new film The House That Jack Built was met with mass walkouts.

The blackly comic thriller, which stars Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman, follows the murder spree of a serial killer over the course of several decades. Advance word on the film suggested that it would feature scenes of sadistic violence and brutality, with Cannes director Thierry Frémaux saying that it featured “a subject so controversial” that it could only appear in an out-of-competition slot at the festival.

That advance billing seems to have been lived up to, with Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh reporting more than 100 people leaving the cinema prematurely due to the film’s “disgusting” content. “Gross. Pretentious. Vomitive. Torturous. Pathetic,” wrote one attendee on Twitter, while entertainment reporter Roger Friedman described it as a “vile movie” that “should not have been made”.

“He mutilates Riley Keough, he mutilates children... and we are all there in formal dress expected to watch it?” another viewer told Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan. Al Jazeera’s Charlie Angela also left the screening early, stating that “seeing children being shot and killed is not art or entertainment”.

The scene which seems to have prompted the majority of walkouts is one in which Dillon’s character shoots two children at a family picnic in the head with a rifle. In another Keogh’s character is seen having her breast sliced off, while a flashback scene shows a child removing a duckling’s leg with a pair of pliers. Archive footage from concentration camps is also shown.

Von Trier was making his first appearance on the Croisette since being declared “persona not grata” by the festival over a 2011 press conference in which he joked about sympathising with the Nazis. At the time the Cannes board declared the director’s comments “unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival”.

However, last month Cannes overturned the ban, with Frémaux saying that it was a “punishment that was disproportionate and that had lasted long enough”. That decision was greeted negatively in some quarters, with critics pointing to allegations made by the musician Björk, who claimed that Von Trier had sexually harassed her on the set of his film Dancer in the Dark. Von Trier denies the allegations.

Critical response to The House That Jack Built has been largely negative. In a two-star review, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote that the film was “an ordeal of gruesomeness and tiresomeness that was every bit as exasperating as I had feared”, though he did admit that he was impressed by its “spectacular horror finale”. Also giving the film two stars was the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, who wrote it “feels like way too much and nowhere near enough”, while, in an F-grade review, The Playlist’s Jessica Kiang described it as “misogynistic” and “irredeemably unpleasant”.

Not everyone seems to have been appalled by The House That Jack Built, however. Setoodeh reports that the film received a standing ovation at the Cannes premiere, which prompted someone sitting near him to declare: “They’ll clap for anything.”