Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
68
(33 sources)
68
(33 sources)
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100
-
100
Philadelphia Inquirer
Aronofsky has fashioned a chilling vision that lives up to the caustic irony of its title and gives us a nightmare that is not lightly forgotten. Read Full Review » -
100
Entertainment Weekly
May be the first movie to fully capture the way that drugs dislocate us from ourselves. Read Full Review » -
100
San Francisco Chronicle
He (Aronofsky) has put together a phantasmagoria of self-destructive obsession that is so visually astounding it becomes its own saving grace. Otherwise, we might not be able to bear it. Read Full Review » -
91
Portland Oregonian
Burstyn is astonishing, forsaking all vanity to make silly biddy Sara a fully dimensioned human being. Read Full Review » -
90
Dallas Observer
A fluent, intelligent piece of work whose sex and violence are anything but gratuitous, and exactly the kind of highly personal, no-holds-barred vision of life on the ragged edge that independents always aspire to but rarely have the goods to achieve. Read Full Review » -
90
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90
Los Angeles Times
A work of art whose beauty has the eternal power of redemption. Read Full Review » -
88
Baltimore Sun
An unrelentingly dark vision that's as hard to watch as it is impossible to walk away from. Read Full Review » -
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel. Read Full Review » -
88
New York Daily News
Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch. Read Full Review » -
88
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88
New York Post
A powerful fable about love and addiction that manages to be darkly humorous when it isn't graphic or harrowing in the extreme. Read Full Review » -
80
Salon.com
The tremendous power of Aronofsky's filmmaking -- its omnivorous omnipotence, if that makes any sense -- has the curious effect of diluting its emotional impact. Read Full Review » -
78
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75
Chicago Tribune
Often, Requiem for a Dream is as technically inventive and daring as the Scottish heroin film "Trainspotting," but it has more resonance and feeling. And when Burstyn is on screen, it often becomes heartbreaking. Read Full Review » -
70
Variety
It’s technically striking filmmaking, to be sure, but what it’s presenting is nothing that many people will want to look at. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
This bleak vision directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi") is pointless with good reason. Read Full Review » -
70
Film.com
Love it or hate it -- and I suspect, frankly, most people are going to hate it -- this is like no other film you've ever seen. Read Full Review » -
70
Slate
Becomes increasingly unwatchable -- not just bleak but punishing, as if the director wants to fry your circuits along with his characters'. Read Full Review » -
70
Village Voice
May be an elaborate stunt, a bungee jump, but even so, it's forceful enough to leave a rare palpitating residue. Read Full Review » -
63
San Francisco Examiner
It's one of the most beautifully unpleasant movies ever made - its reverse charge being that it is no fun at all. Read Full Review » -
60
TV Guide
Aronofsky has given us a well-acted, gorgeously overwrought and luridly entertaining exploitation flick -- a midnight movie for future generations. Read Full Review » -
60
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60
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58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
To be fair, Aronofsky has a knack for stylistic overkill, and his hammering onslaught is undeniably riveting, at first anyway. Read Full Review » -
50
Christian Science Monitor
Solid acting helps the story stay earthbound when Aronofsky's filmmaking gets addicted to its own flashy cynicism, but the picture sometimes seems as dazed and confused as the situations it wants to criticize. Read Full Review » -
50
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49
Mr. Showbiz
Never the heart-wrenching emotional experience it seems intended to be. Read Full Review » -
38
Boston Globe
It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater. Read Full Review » -
30
Washington Post
While director Aronofsky pistol-whips your attention with his style, the characters (mostly relegated to human mannequins in Aronofsky's visual schemes) suffer big time. Read Full Review » -
30
Film.com
Too self-consciously dark, too aware of its long, murky, art-designed descent into the underbelly of America's addictive personality. Read Full Review » -
20
Washington Post
In the end the movie goes nowhere a hundred movies haven't already been and tells us nothing we don't already know. It does so with so much violent energy, however, it's like four brutal years at film school crammed into an hour and a half. Read Full Review »
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