Emily
Bleecker Street Media | Release Date: February 17, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 15, 2022
With Emily, Frances O’Connor has crafted a first film that feels like the work of an accomplished master. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 16, 2023
Building on a series of oppositions — nature and culture, realism and romance, duty and freedom — O’Connor brings Emily the myth to vibrant life, persuasively suggesting that this ostensibly strange and cloistered genius came into being not despite her contradictions but through them. Read full review
90
Screen DailyAllan HunterSep 15, 2022
Mackey convinces us that there are so many more colours to Emily than the ones she is allowed to display. Her thoughtful, understated performance matches a film that teases out the flesh-and-blood emotions from the stuff of gothic romance. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldFeb 21, 2023
This Emily is indeed unworldly, uncomfortable around strangers, struggling to comply with what society expects of her. And yet the artist bubbles up inside her, emerging at moments both inconvenient (there’s a harrowing sequence at a party in which Emily dons a mask and takes on a ghostly persona) and poetic. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyFeb 17, 2023
What Emily does so well is establish a mood. The mood is flexible enough to contain multitudes. Read full review
85
The AtlanticShirley LiFeb 21, 2023
It’s only right that a film about her challenges—and maybe even disturbs—its audience in turn. Read full review
83
The Film StageChristopher SchobertSep 15, 2022
O’Connor, who also scripted, adroitly manages the feat of making a 19th-century period piece burst with contemporary feeling. Read full review
80
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeFeb 17, 2023
The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile”), whose wide eyes and expressive features convey a torment and vivacity being held in constant check by a repressive society. Read full review
80
Screen RantRachel LaBonteFeb 17, 2023
Led by a stunning Emma Mackey, Emily is a striking depiction of a woman embracing her individuality while crafting an iconic piece of literature. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithFeb 17, 2023
A film such as this one ought to present a portrait that feels in some sense true and also make viewers so engaged that they’re hungry to learn more about the subject. Suffused with youthful passion and a deepening sensation of onrushing doom, Ms. O’Connor’s film heartily succeeds on both counts. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 15, 2023
Written and directed by the Australian actor Frances O’Connor, making a vibrant feature filmmaking debut, it will surely madden sticklers for accuracy, which is all to the good. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeOct 17, 2022
O’Connor clearly isn’t afraid of rattling cages when approaching sacred texts. There’s something refreshingly untethered about the gusto with which she reimagines Emily, tossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyOct 14, 2022
Mackey, in particular, is a powerhouse. The young star is matched well with O’Connor’s carefully calibrated, appealingly earnest script, which approximates a modern sensibility without striking a false note or straying from Emily’s contemporaneous moors. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyOct 13, 2022
Though it takes a liberal approach to biography, it’s so attuned to Emily’s creative spirit that it’s not implausible that this is how the author might have chosen to envision her own life if given the chance. Emily captures the soul of the artist, if not her reality. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 12, 2022
This is a sensually imaginative dive into the life of the Wuthering Heights author: it is a real passion project for O’Connor, with some wonderfully arresting insights. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangSep 15, 2022
O’Connor’s well-modulated debut doesn’t pretend to be a faithful recreation of the facts of the Brontës’ lives. Instead it succeeds on a much trickier level, giving us a psychologically vivid Emily who did not write “Wuthering Heights” because a real-life romance unlocked her passionate nature, but whom we’d love to imagine having had such a grand affair, because she was always the woman with “Wuthering Heights” inside her. Read full review
80
The GuardianRadheyan SimonpillaiSep 15, 2022
Emily is a sensitive and passionate portrait of the author. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeSep 15, 2022
With her angular face and penetrating gaze, Mackey commands the screen, confidently shepherding us through Emily’s mercurial moods. Her eyes — darting nervously at one moment, squinting suspiciously at another — tells us what dialogue can’t. Read full review
77
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpFeb 16, 2023
Undoubtedly, filmmakers like O’Connor wish to honor their subjects instead of idly speculating. Emily performs that complicated maneuver with casual ease, proving that for the right kind of movies, actors make the best kind of directors. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 22, 2023
The movie may or may not be entirely true to Brontë, but it is surpassingly, and often deliciously, Brontë-esque. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattFeb 17, 2023
There's something gently intoxicating about O'Connor's dreamlike pastoral settings — oh, those wily, windy moors! — and her determination not just to rewrite Emily, but set her free. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubTimothy CogshellFeb 17, 2023
Mackey’s Emily is a young woman who lives the life she writes about, daringly, perhaps knowing time is short. Read full review
75
ColliderEmily BernardFeb 17, 2023
Director Frances O’Connor effortlessly immerses the audience into Emily’s heart, soul, and mind in this refreshing, storybook-like origin story for a reclusive, misunderstood, and underappreciated author. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckFeb 16, 2023
Luckily we get to look long and and hard at this Emily, brought provocatively to life by O’Connor and her star. Strange or not, it’s hard to look away. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineWilliam RepassFeb 13, 2023
The film takes advantage of the leeway for speculation afforded by its subject’s reclusive nature. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 13, 2023
Our writer-director has conjured up a full, flesh and blood life. And our star transforms Emily from a repressed Yorkshire artist who channeled her passions onto the pages of one of the Great Romantic Novels into a human being of sexual passion, love and heartbreak, and a thing for Men on the Moors. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 15, 2022
Even a movie as evocative and well-mounted as this one can’t help but feel like a shadow of a shadow. It traces the silhouette of “The Strange One” without ever achieving the emotionality it needs to feel her touch first-hand. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsFeb 22, 2023
Frances O’Connor’s Emily, her directorial debut, takes a familiar literary biography and garnishes it with the right kind of creative liberties — the vibrant, suggestive kind. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesFeb 23, 2023
By trying to give these women happy endings, or proposing fake reasons for how they came to produce indelible works, these alternative histories only achieve the opposite. They rob them of the truth of their lives. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 21, 2023
For this homage, Emily, actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor uses speculation and outright fiction to fill in the threadbare historical tapestry. The result, although impressively mounted and passably entertaining, has the generic feel of many woman-centered 19th century period pieces. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekFeb 17, 2023
We know relatively little about the woman who wrote Wuthering Heights, but Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut, Emily—which blends fact with fanciful fiction—paints a haunting and sympathetic portrait of the person she might have been. Read full review
60
Time OutHelen O'HaraOct 11, 2022
However slight the recorded romantic history of a well-known female author is, you can be sure it will become a key part of her biopic. Joining the trend now is this account of the life of Emily Brontë, which spends a chunk of its time on a romance that may not have happened. It’s well played and well written, but it’s an odd addition to a story that is remarkable even without invention: studios need to start letting spinsters be spinsters. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedMar 6, 2023
Despite its visual appeal, its concentrated star performance by Emma Mackey and the dedicated obsession of Australian actress Frances O’Connor, making her debut as a writer-director, it gets almost everything wrong and seems more like a work of fiction than a believable biopic. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 21, 2023
It’s all rather enjoyable, and O’Connor, having starred in “Mansfield Park” (1999), certainly knows her way around 19th century romance. Yet the question remains: What is the point of all this? Read full review
40
SlateLaura MillerFeb 17, 2023
Every era, accordingly, tends to create an Emily Brontë in its own image, and Frances O’Connor’s film Emily is a prime example of this: beautifully photographed, preoccupied with its heroine’s fragility, and deeply silly. Read full review
40
EmpireLillian CrawfordOct 11, 2022
If O’Connor’s aim was to recreate a British classic, she has surely failed to reach those lofty heights. Mackey shows further signs of promise, but she’ll be better off elsewhere. Read full review
More From This Movie

75 Critic Reviews

6.9 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL