74
Metascore
36 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88ObserverRex ReedObserverRex ReedIn Darkness is gloomy and hard to take for a running time of 145 minutes, but it's an important film, related with deep conviction, and uncompromising in its understanding of the remarkable things members of the human race have done - to, for, and against each other - in the wilderness of war.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThis story of suffering and almost inadvertent humanitarianism is harrowing, engrossing, claustrophobic and sometimes literally hard to watch.
- 80New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanIt's a transformation as wrenching to watch as it is vital to remember.
- 80Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranIn a world where everyone was looking for an angle, hoping to survive the nightmare and maybe even turn other people's misery into a tidy profit, the fact that a fragile humanity survived at all is little short of a miracle.
- 80Boxoffice MagazineMark KeizerBoxoffice MagazineMark KeizerIn Darkness takes its place among the many great European films to tackle the subject. Plenty of quality-seeking adult moviegoers will be lured to the arthouse and thoroughly moved.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinIn outline, In Darkness is a standard conversion melodrama, but little within those parameters is easy. The darkness lingers into the light.
- 75New York PostV.A. MusettoNew York PostV.A. MusettoHolland has said that she wanted her harrowing and rewarding epic to run long so it would make viewers feel that they're in the sewers as well. In this, she succeeds.
- 70The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottIt is suspenseful, horrifying and at times intensely moving. But the ease with which it elicits these responses from the audience feels more opportunistic than insightful.
- 70The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyWatching the movie, you feel the constriction and the disgust of the life below, but Holland, pacing the film well, knows when to come up for air. Each time she does, the daylight seems like a benediction. [13 & 20 Feb. 2012, p 120]
- 60Time OutDavid FearTime OutDavid FearYou know the money-over-morality argument will eventually tilt toward righteousness, yet the film's turn toward charcoal-sketch notions of good and evil only fuels a simplistic view of historical tragedy in the worst sort of way.