Everybody Knows
Focus Features | Release Date: February 8, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyFeb 6, 2019
If there’s one nit to pick with Everybody Knows, it’s that Farhadi’s films, as excellent as they are, are starting to feel a bit same-y. He’s plying the same family-in-crisis formula he’s worked before. That formula still works like gangbusters, but it’s becoming a formula nonetheless: Happiness and community curdle into paranoia and suspicion. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldFeb 28, 2019
There’s a lovely sense, throughout the film, of how real life sometimes interrupts things, the way a child’s prattling disrupts the pretty wedding ceremony, or how even in the midst of grief breakfast must be made. Read full review
88
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 12, 2019
Immensely watchable and thematically complex tale, which in some ways plays out like a deceptively conventional Agatha Christie-style whodunit. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 8, 2018
It’s a taut setup that risks veering into soapy territory, but Farhadi reveals just enough involving details to pause at individual moments and rest on more intimate observations. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaFeb 13, 2019
It's fascinating and unpredictable, so much so that the fate of Irene almost becomes a secondary concern. And thanks to the very clever and very compassionate way that Farhadi has crafted this film, that's not a flaw. Read full review
80
TheWrapSteve PondMay 10, 2018
This is not Farhadi doing a genre exercise; as is most of his work, Everybody Knows is a quietly gripping examination of societal divisions, of class, of secrets that bind us together and pull us apart. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 9, 2018
The mystery becomes popcorn-chompingly compelling, each new piece of information adding shading and dimension to the true shape of the family. Nobody is above suspicion or below empathy. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLisa NesselsonMay 8, 2018
Making fine use of a top-flight Spanish-speaking cast, Asghar Farhadi deftly inserts love, resentment, class, money and family ties into a propulsive narrative replete with doubts, accusations, intimations, red herrings and other welcome ingredients from the suspenseful-drama arsenal. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 8, 2018
Farhadi’s storytelling has overpowering force. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 22, 2019
It’s still a fine showcase for great acting, a great setting and a pretty good, if not great yarn unraveling the social fabric of a family, its history and the ugly secrets Everybody Knows but nobody has talked about — until now. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 16, 2019
Everybody Knows finds Farhadi (working with longtime editor Hayedeh Safiyari) consciously going for quicker-than-usual cutting, rarely lingering over anything, always setting up the next part of the mystery. The acting’s uniformly strong, always at the service of a knotty story. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 16, 2019
I do know that Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem make this brooding suspense melodrama with tragic undertones more watchable than it deserves to be. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 12, 2019
As is often the case with Farhadi’s films, Everybody Knows progresses as though nothing special were happening, and yet it’s all very interesting, anyway. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt FagerholmFeb 8, 2019
Far stronger than its lackluster buzz from Cannes suggested, this film is yet another testament to Farhadi’s genius in mining immense power from silence and stillness. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckFeb 7, 2019
By the end of this film — perhaps not Farhadi’s most piercing work but surely a polished, textured, and very engaging effort — you’ll look at the final two faces on the screen as they sit down to talk, and will likely still be asking yourself: Did everybody know? Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 8, 2018
As he transfers his talents to a European setting and Spanish-speaking cast, Farhadi loses none of his remarkable ability to observe close relationships collapsing under stress. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineTim GriersonMay 25, 2018
Farhadi remains excellent at showing how easily family units can splinter after years of relative peacetime. But he can’t quite floor us as he once did—we’ve been braced to expect the unexpected from him. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 9, 2018
Quintessentially, and maybe to a fault, this is a Farhadi movie: another of the writer-director’s gripping studies of a family torn asunder by a compounding mess of deception and revelation. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneFeb 11, 2019
Yet the movie is not to be skipped. You should sample its mixture of bacchanal and gall, and revel in Farhadi’s dependable deftness, as he sketches and frames his collection of characters. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 6, 2019
Farhadi’s choreography of the shift from rowdy celebration to frantic desperation is the most effective part of the movie, and he keeps the suspense going on several fronts. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 29, 2018
For those with little prior knowledge of Farhadi’s earlier work, Everybody Knows will play like an intelligent, engrossing drama about a sudden family tragedy that reopens past wounds. The director’s admirers, myself included, might find it harder to get past a dramatic approach that, sturdy though it may be, is starting to harden into formula. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 8, 2018
Though the film is slow to reach a place where its revelations can have an impact, once that starts to happen, it becomes compulsively absorbing. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenFeb 20, 2019
Everybody Knows is not Farhadi’s best work, but he does deliver an affair to remember. Read full review
67
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonFeb 14, 2019
As a teller of tense, personal stories about communities in crisis, Farhadi is an absolute master; but with Everybody Knows, he falls just a bit short of the greatness people have come to expect of him. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 8, 2019
As a piece of storytelling, Everybody Knows covers a vast expanse of human experience, but it doesn’t dive very deep. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloNov 28, 2018
Everybody Knows never quite makes the leap from engrossing to exciting. Even the story’s one big plot twist is obvious enough that many will guess it well in advance, and it doesn’t reverberate backward the way that long-buried secrets usually do in Farhadi’s work. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 9, 2018
Farhadi’s genius is to be able to take the most ordinary of situations (say, a separation) and turn it into the stuff of gripping sociological drama. But largely, this time out, he’s rather done the reverse: given a gripping premise and a game cast he has engineered perhaps his most ordinary film. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedFeb 8, 2019
A family epic that is strangely ineffectual and disappointingly underwhelming. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineSam C. MacMay 9, 2018
Asghar Farhadi falls back on the expository dialogue and dubious perspectival shifts that he frequently resorts to as a means of wrapping up knotty narratives. Read full review
60
Vanity FairRichard LawsonNov 29, 2018
There’s nothing wrong with a good soap opera—and when one looks as bespoke as this one, and has such fine actors in it, it should go down a treat. But Everybody Knows lumbers and frustrates as it goes. Read full review
60
Time OutDave CalhounMay 24, 2018
As Farhadi casts his roving, distracted eye over this unhappy community, sharing his story in a choppy, documentary style, it ends up feeling like a curiously detached exercise, more academic than wholly satisfying. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 9, 2018
Farhadi’s screenplay does an artful job of keeping vital fragments of each of its characters secret until the very end. But the climate of over-determined melodrama is rather less involving: characters synopsise their grievances so often, and so thoroughly, that many pivotal scenes have the corny texture of a “previously, on last week’s show” clip reel. Read full review
60
CineVueJoe WalshMay 9, 2018
Arguably, this is the Iranian’s most mainstream film to date, and lacks the subtlety of his early work, yet he still shows he has the ability to deliver devastating blows that leave you stunned. While not on top form, Faradhi demonstrates he is still a master craftsman, albeit in a more conventional mould. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijMay 8, 2018
If the film remains largely watchable it is because Farhadi has cast some of the finest actors in Spain and they know how to breathe life into their characters even when they don’t have all that much to do (though a few of them have quite a lot to say). Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 8, 2019
Working in Spanish for the first time, the filmmaker somehow allows the interweaving threads of his plot to get tangled into a jumble even he can’t satisfactorily unravel. It’s a damn shame. Read full review
50
Film ThreatFilipe FreitasFeb 7, 2019
Farhadi fails to provide startles and thrills, relying solely on the dramatic side of things to impress. But even that factor is disastrous as he tiresomely attempts to suggest connections between the past and the present. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 29, 2018
Everybody Knows — which is billed as a psychological thriller, though it’s really more of a family melodrama — feels meandering and indistinct. Read full review
25
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 9, 2018
Overwriting has been the constant weakness in Farhadi’s filmmaking, but here the writer-director — who should really consider passing scriptwriting duties on to someone else for a change — truly outdoes himself. Read full review
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