Love Lies Bleeding
A24 | Release Date: March 8, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
44
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 2, 2024
For a film as over-the-top as this, it might be counterintuitive to talk about subtlety, but Stewart is genuinely that; her line readings are coolly calibrated, quizzical, restrained, sometimes infinitesimally double-taking at the bizarre or outrageous things happening in front of her. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleAlejandra MartinezMar 13, 2024
The all-out Love Lies Bleeding is a love story that won’t work for everyone. However, for those who can revel in the blood-soaked, complicated, sapphic delights that make up the backbone of the film, the saga of Lou and Jackie will be one for the ages. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJan 25, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding’s total lack of filter is its greatest strength. It’s the sort of film you instinctively want to tuck under a mattress: hot, nasty and mouth-wateringly disreputable, this is cinema with nothing to lose. Read full review
90
Little White LiesHannah StrongMay 2, 2024
Frenetic and obsessive, this is still a love story amid the gore and slick of body oil – a heart-pounding, iron-pumping descent into the heady heart of obsession and desire. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonMar 8, 2024
Though the pair whisper the word “love” in bed and even seem to think they mean it, this is not a movie about two people healing each other. It’s about two broken souls mashing their jagged edges together, hurting each other and those around them. And it’s fun to watch the blood splatter. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 7, 2024
In Love Lies Bleeding, Glass borrows liberally but not mindlessly. Instead, she takes familiar themes and more than a few clichés — romantic doom, family trauma — and playfully bends them to her purposes. Read full review
90
SlashfilmBill BriaJan 26, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding transforms into a thrillingly grimy, seedy, Americana-and-fluid-soaked body-horror noir that's unabashedly queer and winningly deranged. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 22, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding doesn’t have time for a slow burn. It’s a movie that comes in hot and leaves in a molten blaze of glory. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 14, 2024
It’s the kind of film that grabs you from the opening sequences and holds you in its grimy grip all the way through the closing credits, when the s- - - is still hitting the fan. Read full review
88
Washington PostJessica KiangMar 13, 2024
Despite the radio reporting the fall of the Berlin Wall and some very “Just Say No”-era drug busts, this is a mythic 1980s and a mythic USA, peopled by venal desperados pulled from the mildewed pages of a 1950s Jim Thompson novel. Read full review
88
ABC NewsPeter TraversMar 8, 2024
Dive head first into this pulpy, erotic crime thriller starring a fireball Kristen Stewart as a gym manager in hot love with a young bodybuilder (a sensational Katy M. O'Brian), Directed in a fever by the great Rose Glass, the film is a grenade of image and sound ready to blow. Read full review
88
ObserverLaura BabiakMar 7, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is an exhilarating ride from beginning to end. Whether that’s because of its status as a tense crime thriller, its brutal violence, its sultry central romance or a combination of all three, the pulpy, pulsing power of this movie cannot be denied. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJan 21, 2024
A few of the daringly ambitious punches don’t completely land, especially in a frenetic final act, but it’s a minor complaint for a film that confirms that Glass is a major talent with an uncompromising vision. Read full review
83
Original-CinThom ErnstMar 11, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is bent in the most unexpected ways, filling the screen with the impossible while refusing to make excuses. Read full review
83
The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsJan 24, 2024
It’s fair to say there’s too much going on at once. The movie can feel like it’s a bit on steroids, too. But it’s so self-assured, so confident with the characters it’s tethered to, the genre lines it blurs, and the love story that waffles with each dead body rolled up into a carpet or dragged down a stairwell. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyDevan CogganJan 22, 2024
It’s a brutal, bloody, and discombobulating ride, but boy, is it a blast. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyMay 8, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding bottles that hot, feverish, salvatory desire, only to shake it like soda pop and then ping off the cap. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMay 1, 2024
What keeps it ticking is the fiery gut-clenched romance between the two leads. Read full review
80
EmpireLaura VenningMar 26, 2024
Visceral and heady, this is a blood-soaked, all-American fable that’s as if Thelma And Louise literally went on steroids. Rose Glass is a force to be reckoned with. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 13, 2024
The whole thing runs through Stewart, and she’s great — just one of those movie stars you can’t take your eyes off. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensMar 8, 2024
Wherever these two love-crazed lesbians’ poorly-thought-out plans take them, we’re along for the dizzying ride. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerMar 6, 2024
The tactile world Glass has crafted is just as immersive and erotic in its design as it is physically between her two lead lovers. Read full review
80
Total FilmMatt GlasbyFeb 29, 2024
More fever dream than film, Love Lies Bleeding shows that Glass is the real deal. Who knows what sights she has to show us next? Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenFeb 12, 2024
The film is pleasantly reminiscent of ’90s neo-noirs in both style and storytelling, but with a narrative fearlessness and visual imagination that makes it totally fresh. Read full review
80
IGNKatie RifeJan 26, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding combines intense lesbian sexuality with shocking, graphic violence for a film that really gets the blood pumping. Kristen Stewart embodies her dirtbag character with the jumpy physicality she does so well, and her chemistry with co-star Katy O’Brian is powerful. The film loses focus as it escalates to hysterical heights in its second half, but its pulpy, fetishistic pleasures are potent. Read full review
80
ColliderRoss BonaimeJan 21, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is an exhilarating experience that will make you groan, laugh, cringe, and swoon. This is a remarkable second film from Glass, showing her tremendous ability to build tension and create an entirely unpredictable thriller that won’t be easy to forget. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanJan 21, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding turns consciously wild and garish, and you may think that the film is losing control, yet Rose Glass is fiercely in control of what she’s doing. She’s made a midnight noir that shoots over the top of our expectations but lands where it should, at a place where even valorous people have to go to extremes. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 21, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is a hallucinatory trip down the darkest byways of Americana. It’s too blunt to be as unsettling as Saint Maud but it will leave no one indifferent. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 14, 2024
I wish the busting-loose part went further in “Love Lies Bleeding.” But Stewart, subtle and fierce, and O’Brian, sinewy and fiercer, prove exceptional at hitting two or three notes at once, and never obviously. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 14, 2024
Dark, darkly funny, surreal and nauseatingly violent, Love Lies Bleeding is a serious shock to the system. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldMar 13, 2024
Everything about Rose Glass’ violent revenge thriller Love Lies Bleeding is unexpected; you watch it as if strapped into a roller-coaster car, not sure when the next dip or swerve might be. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittMar 13, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is a blood-soaked throwback to '80s erotic thrillers and action cinema but also Glass’ deconstruction of cinematic hypermasculinity through a female lens. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 12, 2024
As a lesbian thriller, the movie calls to mind the Wachowski’s “Bound” (1996), though “Love Lies Bleeding” is clumsier and more spontaneous, as though it were being made up on the spot. Though the spontaneity ultimately exhausts itself, it’s enjoyable most of the way. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubLauren J. CoatesMar 12, 2024
Full of striking visuals from cinematographer Ben Fordesman, a healthy dash of horror and sci-fi in the script, and a monumental performance from O’Brian, Loves Lies Bleeding is another surrealist sapphic gem from Rose Glass. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMar 10, 2024
Love Lives Bleeding has a grimy verve all its own. It’s a nightmare metaphor for how hard some people have to fight for love, especially when it’s not approved of. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleMar 6, 2024
Not all of it works. Heavy doses of melodrama and flashy surrealism sap some of the lurid spell of “Love Lies Bleeding.” But this feels tantalizingly close to the idealized version of a Kristen Stewart film. Read full review
75
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiJan 23, 2024
The entertaining movie from director Rose Glass, whose first feature was “Saint Maud,” is unsparing in its graphic depictions of violence, abuse and extreme aspects of the body. Many will find all of that stuff gratuitous, but it fleshes out this unsavory world and ratchets up the plot’s tension. Read full review
75
TheWrapMatthew CreithJan 21, 2024
Glass is always aware of what might disgust her audience and make them squirm, a delightful and intriguing addition to this psychological thriller that is anything but subtle. It’s an impressive directorial achievement that compliments the work of Glass’s equally stirring cast. Read full review
75
The PlaylistMarshall ShafferJan 21, 2024
The rabble-rousing enthusiasm of the enterprise carries it throughout, allowing the raucous vibes to paper over some thin characterization. The script, which is often content to remain skin-deep, just does not pack the same muscle as the directorial verve. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandJan 21, 2024
It doesn’t look or feel or move like much else, all those other cinematic comparisons aside, and the sheer scope of its ambition is enough to inspire awe. Maybe the most obvious answer is the best one: love itself is a drug. So is cinema. Read full review
70
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 2, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is practically guttural, and the emotions that take hold of each character are raw and unfiltered. With action, crime, and romance mingling and building toward an explosive and engaging finale, the film is a thrilling ride from start to finish. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 21, 2024
The film is at its best when it focuses on Lou and Jackie’s love for each other . . . Their passion fuels a lot of the characters’ impulsive decisions later in the story. But as things descend into further violence, the film can start to feel one note. Read full review
65
The AtlanticDavid SimsMar 12, 2024
That willingness to shock sets Love Lies Bleeding apart from a lot of other neo-noirs, where cool, smoky restraint is the norm. Read full review
63
Slant MagazinePat BrownFeb 19, 2024
In the end, it’s a memorably girthy, if not evenly muscled, ode to the treacherousness but ultimate value of romantic love. Read full review
60
Time OutElizabeth WeitzmanMar 14, 2024
The batshit fever dream that Kristen Stewart’s fans have been waiting for, Love Lies Bleeding also happens to be the best B-movie of the year. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesMar 13, 2024
Ms. Stewart, who has maintained an impressively adventurous career since her “Twilight” days concluded more than a decade ago, helps keep the film upright, beautifully blending a moody exterior with the care of a lover and the anxiety skittering beneath it all as Lou tries to keep her world from coming completely apart. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMar 8, 2024
Ultimately, the true genre of “Love Lies Bleeding” is a Kristen Stewart movie. That genre, too, is one that the director neither expands nor reinvents. Read full review
55
The Daily BeastNick SchagerJan 21, 2024
A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonMar 18, 2024
I generally love noir, gore, kick-ass women, the 1980s — but “Love Lies Bleeding” ladled out a visual stew I did not enjoy consuming. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 15, 2024
There’s still quite a bit to like here, from the strong sense of atmosphere to the layers of a Hitchcockian plot, but this is not a complete movie. And when viewers are laughing at a movie rather than with it, something has gone awry. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMar 12, 2024
Watching Love Lies Bleeding becomes a trial of patience, as the viewer waits for the plot to rise to meet the film’s good looks, or for those stylish aspects to blossom further into elegant abstraction. Instead, the film hobbles along, revealing ever more contrivances. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 21, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding makes no apologies for its stylistic boldness or its rising body count, but its swagger cannot hide a nagging hollowness underneath. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeJan 21, 2024
Without the garish excess, the script is rote and rickety, a ride to the wild side that’s all out of gas. Read full review
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