Black Swan
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 3, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
PremiereKristin HuntJan 6, 2011
Just like the final performance by its deeply disturbed heroine, Black Swan is perfect. Read full review
100
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreDec 15, 2010
Artful, epic, operatic even, this thriller set in the world of ballet challenges the viewer with its intelligence and depth and wit. Read full review
100
New York PostLou LumenickDec 6, 2010
This eye-popping, inspired and often-demented (in a good way) cross between "The Red Shoes" and "All About Eve" channels horror maestros David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and Dario Argento. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 6, 2010
One of the best movies of the year. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 6, 2010
To induce a state of dread and mesmerize with beauty is a rare, paradoxical achievement. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 6, 2010
This is, no doubt about it, a tour de force, a work that fully lives up to its director's ambitions. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 6, 2010
Wild and woolly, the movie is a breathtaking head trip that hails from a long tradition of backstage melodramas: "42nd Street," "A Star Is Born," "All About Eve," and, yes, that kitschy '90s relic, "Showgirls." Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 6, 2010
Black Swan is visceral and real even while it's one delirious, phantasmagoric freakout. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 10, 2010
Whether your tastes are delicate or coarse, whether you prefer the ballet or horror movies, there is plenty in the film for you. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsDec 6, 2010
A florid, often lurid, completely enthralling film held in place by a disarming Portman, who rarely leaves the frame. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 9, 2010
It's all or nothing with Black Swan. Either you embrace its headlong descent into madness brought on by the pressures of artistic perfection, compounded by smothering anxiety, or you reject it. It's that simple. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 6, 2010
A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition, Black Swan serves as a fascinating complement to Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," trading the grungy world of a broken-down fighter for the more upscale but no less brutal sphere of professional ballet. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 9, 2010
This drama-horror hybrid, set within a New York ballet company, strikes a tone more along the lines of the terrifying hallucinatories of Aronofsky's breakout film, "Requiem for a Dream," revisiting, too, favorite themes of monster mommies and female hysteria. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 11, 2010
Black Swan is ridiculously over the top, but in a way that makes it fascinating to watch. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 6, 2010
A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 6, 2010
The look and feel of Black Swan, which captures the essence of a major New York ballet production, is one of Aronofsky's great successes. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 6, 2010
Portman's portrait of an artist under siege is unmissable and unforgettable. So is the movie. You won't know what hit you. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 6, 2010
A full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd. It centers on a performance by Natalie Portman that is nothing short of heroic. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 6, 2010
Is Black Swan high-minded? I'm happy to say: No. It is extremely high-grade hokum, which is to say it offers several different and combustible varieties. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 6, 2010
Lurid and voluptuous pulp fun, with a sensationalistic fairy-tale allure. You can't take it too seriously, but you can't tear your eyes away from it, either. Read full review
80
EmpireDan JolinJan 17, 2011
An extraordinary, intoxicating movie. Its hard, twisted edges may turn off some, but there's no faulting either Aronofsky's technical mastery or Portman's flawless performance. Read full review
80
Time OutDavid FearDec 6, 2010
Both a baroque thriller set in New York's ballet demimonde and a portrait of artistry as schizoid perfectionism, Darren Aronofsky's new film percolates parallel lines of fine madness-but then, doubling down on duality is this movie's raison d'etre. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 6, 2010
A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp-at the very least, it's the most risible and riotous backstage movie since "Showgirls." Read full review
80
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 6, 2010
Aronofsky isn't loose enough, or canny enough, to be in touch with its camp soul. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 6, 2010
A psychosexual thriller that lures its viewers into a woozy nightmare. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondDec 6, 2010
With Natalie Portman dominating the action and exhibiting a screen maturity not seen from her before, this all-stops-out Grand Guignol melodrama exhibits more than enough blood, sweat and tears (emphasis on the blood) to score nicely beyond the ballet crowd. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 17, 2010
Arriving with a savage grace, director Darren Aronofsky's nightmare-come-to-life Black Swan cements his reputation not only as one of the more daring filmmakers of his generation, but also as an actor's director of the first order. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 16, 2010
Like all his (Aronofsky) films, it's lurid, visually stimulating, thoughtful, absurd in spots, well-cast and unrelentingly intense. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 15, 2010
Black Swan is a stage door melodrama putting new spins on cliches as old as "All About Eve" (and maybe Adam). Setting them among ballerinas as opposed to showgirls or movie stars doesn't make them any less familiar. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 6, 2010
It's excessive and psychologically imprecise, coarse where it should be refined and too much like a David Cronenberg horror movie in places where restraint and intellectual rigor are called for. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 6, 2010
Audaciously whacked-out and never less than entertaining, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan mixes a backstage dance drama with a Freudian psychological thriller that's indebted to Roman Polanski's studies of shattered feminine psyches and David Cronenberg's movies about repressed bodies in rebellion. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 6, 2010
Some girls fight over men. Ballerinas fight over parts. But the occasional brilliance of Black Swan is that it's a one-way fight. Nina battles herself. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 6, 2010
Aronofsky blurs the line between reality and fantasy, turning the film into a gothic horror show that is fascinating and disappointing in equal measure. What's resplendently real, though, is the beauty of Ms. Portman's performance. She makes the whole lurid tale worthwhile. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 6, 2010
The black/white duality isn't terribly interesting, but as in most of Aronofsky's films, an intense horror of the body and its uncontrollability fuels the rhapsodic psychodrama. Read full review
65
NPRJeannette CatsoulisDec 6, 2010
For all its dazzling allure, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, a feverishly psycho thriller set in the hermetic world of classical ballet, proves a meaningless exercise in Grand Guignol exhibitionism. Read full review
60
TimeRichard CorlissDec 6, 2010
Me, I'm of two minds about a movie that wants to be a nail-ripping thriller and a statement on an artist's unholy communion with her role. It's reminiscent of older, better movies. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensDec 6, 2010
Portman toils slavishly to realize Aronofsky's mad vision. It isn't her fault that, despite Black Swan's visual splendor and bursts of grand guignol excess, this emotionally inert movie never does grow wings. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedDec 6, 2010
This exercise in hysteria is so over the top that you don't know whether to scream or laugh. Despite an emotionally gripping performance by Natalie Portman, it's nothing more than a lavishly staged "Repulsion" in toe shoes. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 6, 2010
A love-it-or-hate-it movie. Put me in the (sort of) hate-it column. My slight qualification here is because Darren Aronofsky's movie starring Natalie Portman as an increasingly unhinged ballerina gets points for being unlike anything else that's out there. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttDec 6, 2010
Indeed, White Swan/Black Swan dynamics almost work, but the horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 6, 2010
Off the dance floor, however, Black Swan is trashy and incoherent. Aronofsky, for all his gifts, is a gaudy maestro, opportunistic and insecure as an artist. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 6, 2010
Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not. Read full review
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