Lizzie
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: September 14, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
17
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
TheWrapAlonso Duralde
Between the camerawork and the subtle performances, Lizzie could very easily have been a silent film while still telling its story as effectively. But Kass’ dialogue is terrific. Read full review
80
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisSep 11, 2018
Lizzie isn’t perfect — the pacing can flag, and the lovely Kim Dickens, as Lizzie’s older sister, barely registers — but Ms. Sevigny’s intelligence and formidable control keep the melodrama grounded. Her empathy for Borden, whose fragile constitution belies a searing will, is palpable, as is the sense of inescapable peril surrounding the two female leads. Read full review
80
The GuardianJordan Hoffman
[A] gripping, well-acted and sharply-written low-budget drama. Read full review
79
The VergeBryan Bishop
The movie is engrossing, with Sevigny delivering a fierce performance that inspires empathy in spite of — or perhaps because of — the awful things the audience knows Lizzie will eventually do. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyOct 1, 2018
Something of an intriguing curio (the first feature film about a subject treated in song, poem, television and theatre), Lizzie has some memorable pluses and significant minuses. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 28, 2018
There are only two erotic scenes between the two women, and Macneill, Sevigny and Stewart handle them with conviction: For all the horror of her situation, Lizzie needed some larger motivation to wield her axe. Lizzie dramatically provides it. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonSep 20, 2018
Directed with restraint by Craig William Macneill, Lizzie never quite gets to what made Lizzie Borden tick, but it’s possible no film ever could. But it remains an entirely watchable drama thanks in no small part to the charisma of its two lead women. Read full review
75
The Film StageJordan RaupSep 14, 2018
Rather than focusing on Lizzie as a figure out of a horror movie or creepy folk tale, she is portrayed as a woman who found liberty only through the death of her oppressors. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineHenry StewartSep 12, 2018
The film moves evenly toward a conclusion that feels as inevitable as it does inescapable, while providing a plausible framework for the still-mysterious true crime. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie Felperin
Not everything is spelled out too literally, and both the screenplay and Macneill's sensitive direction leave it to the lead actors to fill in the foreground colors. Read full review
68
IGNJim VejvodaSep 11, 2018
Ultimately, an artsy crime film like this depends on the power of its central performances and how compelling the story’s main point is. Sevigny and Stewart make a good team, keeping you invested in proceedings even when the narrative bogs down. Read full review
67
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerSep 12, 2018
Lizzie isn’t exactly an exciting film, but it’s absolutely a compelling one. Much of that, again, emerges from Sevigny’s work, who finds the notes of delicacy that the film around her occasionally lacks. Read full review
67
The PlaylistRuss Fischer
While [Chloe Sevigny's] work is commanding and a dedicated set of tough, engaged performances from the ensemble add life to the odd legend, awkward structural choices bleed away the film’s emotional punch long before the credits roll. Read full review
63
ObserverOliver JonesSep 20, 2018
There is a cool detachment to the presentation of the story that, while perhaps fitting for a movie about a crime so carefully calculated it defies imagination, nonetheless serves to undercut the film’s high stakes. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 19, 2018
The resulting movie is atmospheric and compelling, and it makes an empathetic case for Borden as an intelligent, passionate woman so stifled by her father and the suffocating society he represented that she lashed out (and then some). Read full review
60
EmpireLiz BeardsworthDec 17, 2018
An absorbing, well-acted psychological thriller that loses its grip as it slips into sensationalism. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshSep 13, 2018
The respect for Lizzie means that film almost denies drama, rendering some moments almost inert. It could use an operatic high note, or even a truly deep dark night of the soul, some oscillation in the levels. But the film reflects the evenness with which Sevigny portrays the unflappable Lizzie. Read full review
60
VarietyAmy Nicholson
It’s a simple story made to rouse modern hearts, and the performances and cinematography are so good, the film nearly pulls off the trick. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeSep 13, 2018
Putting Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny on screen together was a wonderful choice—one that doesn’t deserve to be drowned in a torrent of confusing, implausible, and just downright dull ones. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd
[An] unconvincing, oppressively somber take on the Lizzie Borden story. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 26, 2018
The casting seems right, the pacing washes out the overbearing nature of these lives and waters down the motivations this script seems intent on providing. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanSep 19, 2018
The sexual backstory is a new twist, one the filmmakers handle with less finesse than is healthy for the argument that they ultimately make. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleySep 14, 2018
The frustration with Lizzie is that a lot of it works, but the style - elegant, hushed, and period-appropriate - acts as a damper on all the fraught possibilities. Lizzie is at war with its own impulses. You can sense there's a sexy overheated melodrama in there, yearning to burst free of its corset stays. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatySep 13, 2018
By the time the climactic act of violence finally arrives, there’s barely enough patience left in the viewer to feel any real sense of catharsis or liberation. Just exhaustion. Read full review
50
Screen DailyAnthony Kaufman
Lizzie is, at best, a powerful showcase for the two actors. At its worst, it’s a tiresome and unappealing exercise in the inevitability of a family’s mutually assured destruction. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard Lawson
Lizzie isn’t a bad film, but it doesn’t accomplish all that it wants to—and all I wanted it to. We’re never as immersed in its psychological swirl as we should be, and every character in it is either such a creep or a flinching headcase that it’s hard to get our emotional hooks in any of them. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The problem is the enervated pacing and ludicrous depiction — after much fancy skipping back and forth in time — of the murders themselves. Read full review
42
IndieWireKate Erbland
Repetition grinds Lizzie to a halt, and the film lacks anything resembling energy, cycling through the same beats until something happens only because it has to. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansDec 25, 2018
Most irritating is the murder scene itself, which sees both women stripping nude, seemingly in order for the camera to leer more effectively at their bodies rather than to spare them getting their petticoats bloodied. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerSep 26, 2018
Dialogue is reduced to consistent mumbled whispering, in an attempt to build mood and tension, but that's as ineffectual as the sepia-tinged photography is at evoking the period. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottSep 20, 2018
As for that murder scene, it's undoubtedly the part of the film that will get people talking the most. Clearly and meticulously taking its cues from the widely circulated photos of the crime scene, it is dramatic, it is attention-getting and it is memorable. It is, in other words, everything that the rest of Lizzie is not. Read full review
40
Film Journal InternationalRebecca PahleSep 13, 2018
There are disjointed elements here—a modern-leaning script, driftless performances and an overwrought score from Jeff Russo, its clanking piano more suited to an out-and-out Gothic thriller—that Macneill is ultimately unable to wrestle into a cohesive, compelling whole. The result is a dull retread of a story that deserved better. Read full review
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