Eraserhead

Libra Films International | Release Date: February 3, 1978

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

87	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Mike D'Angelo

See Eraserhead once and it’ll lodge itself firmly in some dank recess of your brain and refuse to vacate. Read full review

100

EmpireSteve Beard

Gothically shot in black and white and numerous shots that have influenced the next generation of directors, this is a classic, no matter how comfortable it is to watch. Read full review

100

Tom Huddleston

Eraserhead is a singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul. Read full review

100

Michael Wilmington

What makes Eraserhead great-and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch's films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer. Read full review

100

The GuardianPeter Bradshaw

It's beautiful and strange, with its profoundly disturbing ambient sound design of industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism. Read full review

100

RogerEbert.comPeter Sobczynski

Here was a film that took elements that one might have encountered in other movies in the past—black humor, gore, surrealism, erotic imagery, gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and oddball performances—and presented them in such a unique and deeply personal manner that the end result was something that literally looked, sounded and felt like nothing that had ever come before it. Read full review

100

Chuck Bowen

Eraserhead is an extraordinarily raw film that’s not so much an announcement of its filmmaker’s obsessions, but a complete, intimate, and heartbreaking fulfillment of them. Read full review

100

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

It's a creepily sensuous film that suggests that the dark and troubling things we like to repress inhabit dresser drawers, live behind the radiator or lie under the bed. They are part of the environment. Read full review

Pauline Kael

The slow, strange rhythm is very unsettling and takes some getting used to, but it's an altogether amazing, sunsuous film; it even has an element of science fiction and some creepy musical numbers, and the soundtrack is as original and peculiar as the imagery.

Jack Kroll

Lynch comes amazingly close to the logic of dreams and nightmares, in which successive layers of reality seem to dissolve, sucking you into a terrifying vortex. [11 Sep 1978, p.95]

Manohla Dargis

The black-and-white world of Eraserhead disturbs, seduces and even shocks with images that are alternately discomforting, even physically off-putting, and characterized by what André Breton called convulsive beauty. Read full review

Dave Kehr

Some of it is disturbing, some of it is embarrassingly flat, but all of it shows a degree of technical accomplishment far beyond anything else on the midnight-show circuit. Read full review

Tom Buckley

A murkily pretentious shocker. Read full review

A ghoul's dinner of undigested indelicacies pilfered from other horror feasts; the undeniable ability of the chef, director David K. Lynch, has been utilized to create a cream sauce in which the victuals cook without ever cooking together. [18 Sep 1979]

Staff (Not Credited)

Eraserhead is a sickening bad-taste exercise made by David Lynch under the auspices of the American Film Institute. Like a lot of AFI efforts, the pic has good tech values (particularly the inventive sound mixing), but little substance or subtlety.