Maximum Overdrive

De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) | Release Date: July 25, 1986

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

24	METASCORE Generally unfavorable reviews based on 8 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Buy on

Stream On

Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Bill Cosford

Maximum Overdrive is the classic botch. Good idea, nice effects, bad pacing, porous script, no punch...Too bad. As usual, the premise has promise. [26 July 1986, p.C1]

Patrick Goldstein

Maximum Overdrive offers a variation on what has become a hopelessly hackneyed theme -- technology as monster. As long as King is tinkering with his crazed machines, the film sustains a certain amount of ominous tension, but as soon as the author turns his attention to his actors, the movie's slender storyline goes limp. It's dreary to the max. Read full review

Time Out LondonStaff (Not Credited)

A loud, obnoxious, single-idea schlocker...There's carnage galore, but minimal interest. King himself described it as a 'wonderful moron picture', and he was half-right. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Master manipulator Stephen King, making his directoral debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun. Read full review

John Paraeles

For the most part, [King] has taken a promising notion - our dependence on our machines - and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups. Read full review

Rick Kogan

A mess of a movie, a no chills nightmare about what happens to a group of rubes at a Carolina truck stop when the machines go nuts. [29 July 1986, p.3]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE doesn't work on any level. As a comedy it's obvious and asinine, as a horror film it's simply not scary, and as an action film it's a bore. Read full review

Paul Attanasio

Watching Maximum Overdrive is like sitting alongside a 3-year-old as he skids his Tonka trucks across the living room floor and says "Whee!" except on a somewhat grander scale...It's hard to even imagine a movie so impeccably devoid of everything a movie ought to include. [29 July 1986, p.C2]