Eyes Wide Shut
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: July 16, 1999 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
5
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This is a remarkably gripping, suggestive, and inventive piece of storytelling that, like Kubrick's other work, is likely to grow in mystery and intensity over time. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleBob Graham
Totally absorbing even when it, too, strays. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The reconciliation at the end of the film is the one scene that doesn't work; a film that intrigues us because of its loose ends shouldn't try to tidy up. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
While both the novel and the film are weighted in favor of Bill's (Cruise) character, it's Kidman who gives the film's standout performance. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Brilliantly filmed in his usual transfixing style, Kubrick's last movie pleads for alertness to the temptations that assail human nature from within and without. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyManohla Dargis
It's good -- when it's not adrift in an absence of meaning. Read full review
20
SalonCharles Taylor
Kubrick's much-anticipated final film boils down to the most elaborate monogamy lecture ever. Read full review
30
Mr. ShowbizMichael Atkinson
A laughable disaster: an agonizingly long, perversely dull, childishly conceived fantasia on marital sexual angst that could only have been made by someone (like Kubrick).
80
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
It is the very preposterousness of Eyes Wide Shut which is the key to the achievement it represents: it has a singular excessiveness - at once gamey, florid and enigmatically deadpan - which underpins this picture's rich, sensuous style. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Ultimately, Eyes Wide Shut doesn't rank among Kubrick's best work. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The director's famously over-deliberate, pause-laden style verges, for the first time, on amateurville, and that gives us too much time to linger on the movie's more bizarre details. Read full review
20
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's empty of ideas, which is fine, but it's also empty of heat. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It's painstakingly paced, but it's also entrancing. Read full review
90
Film.comRobert Horton
It's Kubrick, for sure, and in often mesmerizing form.
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
In terms of power and effect, Eyes Wide Shut approaches (but does not surpass) Kubrick's vintage work - it is thought-provoking and unsettling. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
A somnolent load of wank. Read full review
100
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Kubrick left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph. Read full review
80
NewsweekJack Kroll
If some nagging sense of anachronism, a bit too much Freudian Vienna in his postmodern New York, prevents Eyes Wide Shut from being at the top of his list, Kubrick's 13th and last film is his most humane. Read full review
70
TNT RoughCutChristopher Brandon
It's a mind-blowing game, and all that nonsense about this being an erotic thriller was merely part of Kubrick's game.
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Eyes Wide Shut still towers above most of the movies out there, immersing the viewer in a web of emotional complexity, at once raw and personal and, at times, theatrically overcooked. Read full review
63
San Francisco ExaminerWesley Morris
Works more as an object of pop curiosity than as a work of popular entertainment. Read full review
100
USA TodayMike Clark
A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them. Read full review
100
Film.comPeter Brunette
As the late Stanley Kubrick's swansong, it fills the bill magnificently.
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Feels like a rough draft at best. Read full review
50
New York PostJonathan Foreman
Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick's Hindenberg. Read full review
63
New York PostRod Dreher
It's shocking only in its banality, impotence and utter lack of heat.
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Whatever it is, it's totally Kubrickian: Its scenes have both an edge and an extraordinary visual perfection that could come from no other filmmaker. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Above all a masterpiece of sustained tone, a tightrope act that pays off in rich and unexpected ways. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverHal Hinson
It is, as his films usually are, dense, complex, and challenging. It is also, sad to say, ponderous, often inscrutable, and ultimately not much fun. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed. Read full review
90
Film.comSean Means
A movie with the power and quality of dreams, where reality merges into symbolism and oddly juxtaposed elements crystallize into a single, electrifying whole.
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