In the Blink of an Eye
Searchlight Pictures | Release Date (Streaming): February 27, 2026 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
1
Mixed:
11
Negative:
4

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
TheWrapDrew TaylorJan 29, 2026
The movie’s big-heartedness is what makes it so essential and, potentially, to those not enamored by its oddball charms, so cloying. But given the state of the world, with each new day bleaker than the last, a movie that is this unabashedly sweet is something that should be treasured, protected and celebrated, not frowned upon. Read full review
50
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonFeb 26, 2026
With In the Blink of an Eye, Stanton is juggling quite a bit, including many landscapes to create and a lot of imagination for exploration. While the visuals are not exactly eye-popping, the movie is plenty serviceable. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonFeb 26, 2026
In the Blink of an Eye proves yet again that Stanton is a dreamer, with an unshakeable faith in humanity. That’s not nothing. Read full review
50
ColliderRoss BonaimeFeb 11, 2026
Stanton has done truly incredible, groundbreaking things in animation, and he’s almost certainly got a great live-action film in him, but In the Blink of an Eye makes one wonder if Stanton should go a bit smaller and work his way up to such grandiose concepts like this. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJan 29, 2026
While it looks beautiful, and Thomas Newman’s score does a lot of heavy lifting given the lack of dialogue, there needed to be more actual storytelling beyond a few key beats of new life and tragic death. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRichard LawsonJan 29, 2026
Overall, there is so little texture to these character arcs that the actors are mostly just working in service of a blandly uplifting message. It’s as if they’ve all been commissioned by a well-funded science museum to lend their bodies and voices to the cause of slickly comestible up-with-people infotainment. Read full review
40
EmpireA.A. DowdMar 12, 2026
WALL•E director Andrew Stanton weaves together three different stories across three different eras of human history. The result is a streaming epic as painfully sappy as it is structurally ambitious. Read full review
40
Screen RantEmedo AshibezeFeb 27, 2026
It reaches for the spiritual vastness of Cloud Atlas and the hushed introspection of Ad Astra, yet ultimately struggles to stir even the faintest flicker of emotion or hope. Read full review
40
The GuardianAdrian HortonFeb 25, 2026
Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting. Read full review
40
IGNChase HutchinsonFeb 10, 2026
In the Blink of an Eye is a disaster of its own making, living in the shadow of far better sci-fi films of old, and never doing anything interesting with any of the ideas it throws out. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 30, 2026
It feels hurried, generalized, inattentive. There’s no specificity, no immersive sense of people actually living their lives. Again, that’s probably partly intentional. But it sure feels like a miscalculation for a movie about the survival of humanity to have so little humanity in it. Read full review
40
VarietySiddhant AdlakhaJan 29, 2026
Both as drama and as science fiction, In the Blink of an Eye doesn’t probe these questions, but rather, drops definitive answers like anvils, leaving little room to ruminate, wrestle, or consider. Read full review
35
The Daily BeastNick SchagerJan 27, 2026
A far cry from [Stanton’s] Pixar gems Finding Nemo and WALL-E, both of which have infinitely more to say about the human condition than this schematic and bathetic bowl of chicken soup for the soul. Read full review
33
The Film StageCaleb HammondFeb 5, 2026
In the Blink of an Eye is 2026’s first true dud. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineJake ColeFeb 25, 2026
In the Blink of an Eye feels less like a film than a commercial for life insurance that got out of hand, or perhaps more accurately one for the kind of hollow Silicon Valley tech optimism that has been thoroughly exposed as a sham by now. Read full review
25
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJan 29, 2026
The only meaningful connection made over the course of the movie is the one between its actors, whose inability to salvage their material does more to braid them together than any of the machinations of Day’s script. Read full review
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