May December
Netflix | Release Date: November 17, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
48
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
VoxAja RomanoJan 5, 2024
If May December were less self-aware, it might belong in the category of camp or failed melodrama; if it were less earnest, it might earn the title of tongue-in-cheek satire. But ultimately, the movie’s discordant aesthetic isn’t coy. It’s about revealing the nightmarish circus that Joe has survived with quiet resilience. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearNov 29, 2023
Moore and Portman inject the movie with wattage, dramatic heft, and a push-pull dynamic associated with immovable objects and irresistible forces. Melton gives May December its slow-burn tragedy. Read full review
100
ObserverLaura BabiakNov 27, 2023
May December is not for people who aren’t willing to engage in works about awful people. The film is daring in its subject matter and its characters, and the actors bring just as much of a deft, disagreeable touch. It is a deeply messed up movie, and it’s all the better for it. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyNov 17, 2023
May December is one of Haynes' most unbalancing and provocative films. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubManuel BetancourtNov 16, 2023
With May December Haynes has crafted an implausible blend of raw authenticity and stylized histrionics that’s fueled by a curious intellectual inquiry: what role do we play in our own story? Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 16, 2023
The hilarious histrionics similarly mask the paedophilia, gaslighting and self-justifications. Haynes cleverly stages a soap opera only to ask: you are enjoying this, but should you be? Read full review
100
Original-CinLiz BraunNov 15, 2023
May December is a movie about moral gray zones, a look at contemporary culture through the unique Todd Haynes lens. What’s involved are great writing and great performances. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 13, 2023
May December is light and amusing, but also profound and serious. See it once — and then think about it for a long time. Read full review
100
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonOct 3, 2023
It’s a master class in discomfort. Read full review
100
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 21, 2023
May December feels like a return to Haynes’s outre origins, a stylish character study that, when inspected closer, may actually have an entire culture—its art, its sexual mores—on its nimble mind. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 21, 2023
It’s about acting, denial, wrongdoing and the age of consent, but also about growing up, and the different ways we tread through that process, or fail to. Read full review
98
The AtlanticShirley LiDec 13, 2023
May December begins grotesquely . . . It ends delicately, as a portrait of fragile, shattered human beings and the mundane entertainment they inspire. Read full review
94
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 16, 2023
This is a juicy, outré exercise that gets its kicks from booting its audience into deliberately uncomfortable corners and then leaving them there to stew. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChristian HolubNov 17, 2023
Haynes’ camera often perceives these characters from around a corner, or from the other side of a mirror, or inside what they think is a safe space — always giving the viewer the simultaneously icky and exhilarating feeling of being a trespasser on private secrets. Read full review
91
The PlaylistCharles BramescoMay 21, 2023
Just because something’s make-believe, whether a creative rendering or the quotidian detail of a marriage, that doesn’t mean it’s any less real. With his masterly manipulation of tone and perspective, Haynes ensures that we can feel that much even as the characters can’t bear to accept it. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 21, 2023
Haynes’ tonal playfulness has sometimes been overshadowed by the unerring consistency of his emotional textures, but here, in the funniest and least “stylized” of his films, it’s easier than ever to appreciate his genius for using artifice as a vehicle for truth. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 30, 2023
Moore and Portman are tremendous, but it’s Melton’s anguished performance that gives the movie its slow-building emotional power. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithNov 16, 2023
Any five audience members might have five different takeaways, which tells you there is a lot going on here. I was left with this thought: How well do we really know anyone, even ourselves? Read full review
90
Little White LiesHannah StrongNov 16, 2023
This is by far Haynes’ funniest film to date, with shades of Almodóvar in its dramatic zooms and heightened domestic tension. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 16, 2023
Less a movie about a scandal than a movie about a movie about a scandal, it seeks to interrogate and even subvert its own promise of ripped-from-the-tabloids titillation, even as it challenges the predilections of an audience that might seek out such a movie. Read full review
90
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaOct 17, 2023
It takes a remarkably self-assured filmmaker to turn such a lurid tale of abuse into something so wildly entrancing and entertaining, but Todd Haynes’ mix of tenderness and camp is a perfect fit for May December. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMay 22, 2023
The film is both humane and scathing. Which is why Haynes’s stylistic treatment of the subject, veering between noirish gusto and flights of snark, winds up being so touching. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesNov 16, 2023
Scripted by Samy Burch, based on a story by Burch and Alex Mechanik, and citing head-spinning references from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona to Mike Nichols’ The Graduate to Hard Copy, May December moves a little like a dream, disorienting as the shimmering heat captured by cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenDec 11, 2023
There’s only one word for the power games going on between the two main characters in May December: delicious. Read full review
88
ABC NewsPeter TraversNov 17, 2023
What would make a 30-ish woman have sex with a 12-year-old boy? Expect director Todd Haynes to throw you thrillingly off balance with peak acting from Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as the lovers and Natalie Portman as the actress eager to go Hollywood with their squirmy moral tale. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 16, 2023
Yes, May December exists in an uncomfortable realm. Haynes isn’t afraid of that, and American movies are better for it. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 16, 2023
With Samy Burch’s razor-sharp script providing some fantastically flourishing dialogue passages, frequent Haynes collaborator Julianne Moore delivering the latest in a long line of magnificently calibrated and memorable performances, and Moore’s fellow Oscar winner Natalie Portman turning in equally layered work, this is an intricately crafted study of people who are experts at putting on facades and all too skilled in the art of deception. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrNov 15, 2023
Scandalous fun and camp are, you imagine, relatively easy with performers like this. But to give it a soul, too? It makes it monumental. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 13, 2023
May December is often weirdly funny. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineBrad HanfordOct 1, 2023
The film examines real-world events through the lens of mass media with a wry humor that masks profoundly complex and painful undercurrents of emotion. Read full review
88
TheWrapTomris LafflyMay 21, 2023
Despite a heavy-handed cocoon motif that sometimes spells out the story’s themes to a fault, Haynes has done something spellbinding here: heady, grown-up and committed to a refreshing dose of moral ambiguity at a time in cinema where moral pandering sadly seems to be the default. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineFarah ChededMay 31, 2023
Pulling off such a seemingly incongruous blend of sensationalism and sincere thoughtfulness is no easy task, but writer and director miraculously find a way to ease the tension between style and substance—and, what’s more, manage to deliver wry commentary on the way we consume scandals at the same time. Read full review
83
The Film StageLuke HicksMay 22, 2023
It would be very fair to expect a movie about a woman who raped a child and her future family’s reckoning with that to be dark, heavy, even overbearing. But May December is more funny than it is fervent, a bona fide spring suburban anthem, an American malady in chrysalis. Read full review
80
Film ThreatSabina Dana PlasseDec 18, 2023
Portman delivers a compelling and unabashed performance, one that is award-deserving. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 18, 2023
The performances, from Moore and in particular Portman, are sublime: both bracingly unsympathetic and wildly enjoyable. Read full review
80
EmpireSteph GreenNov 14, 2023
Surface-level funny but with a well of deeper meaning brewing, May December is not just a skilful satire of suburban propriety; it’s a unique and uncanny affair about the nature of performance itself. Read full review
80
Total FilmEmily MurrayOct 12, 2023
The film thrives on fascinating juxtapositions, Haynes striking a keen balance between true-life complexities and theatrical melodrama. Read full review
80
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonJun 1, 2023
Luckily, it’s as entertaining as it is insightful, using humorous undertones to highlight the dangerous personalities of those who offend. And thanks to that eccentric and campy score to match the tone of the story, Haynes’ latest has all the elements needed to confuse us as much as it entertains and educates, which takes us on a fascinating watching experience. Read full review
80
SlashfilmLex BriscusoMay 30, 2023
May December is an intricate patchwork quilt of melodrama and stark reality woven into one big blanket of suppression. Read full review
80
The IndependentGeoffrey MacnabMay 21, 2023
It’s a closely focused character study, galvanised by the tremendous performances from Portman and Moore, which delves into areas more conventional dramas don’t go near. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 21, 2023
It’s a thorough dive into the psychology of everyone involved, not least of all the woman who’d be drawn to play such a role. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyMay 21, 2023
Haynes makes intriguing work of subtly metafictional psychodrama in May December. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 21, 2023
May December is delivered with a cool, shrewd precision by Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore carries off her dysfunctional queenliness very watchably and Natalie Portman has a great scene where she gives a lecture on acting to Gracie’s children’s high school drama class. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 16, 2023
Although not on the same level as Haynes’ best movie (2015’s Carol), this one highlights the director’s ability to explore complex and dysfunctional human relationships with insight and intelligence. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicAmanda LubertoNov 14, 2023
Moore captivates as a woman who is either emotionally stunted and unaware or viciously in control of the whole chess board. Director Todd Haynes never cracks to let you know just which one she is. It’s possibly purposeful, but a lack of conclusion left me unsatisfied at the end of an otherwise deliciously disquieting movie. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 21, 2023
May December could have more fire; it could be even more twisted. But it’s seductive enough to keep us following along, one betrayal after another. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 21, 2023
The director is poking around in territory that’s familiar to him — self-knowledge and public perception, identity and duality, transparency and performance, social norms and the sexual outlaw. But the emotional volatility of the story ends up being somewhat muted by the approach. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 1, 2023
The stars have an unapproachability in their characters and performances that makes the whole enterprise play like a game in which we aren’t given all the rules. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleDec 4, 2023
Irony has a wearying effect after a while, ultimately leading to a flattening of the ethical landscape so that by the end of it we can’t help but feel they’re all as bad as each other. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyNov 14, 2023
The movie’s dramatic framework is bound up tightly and sealed off, and Haynes doesn’t puncture or fracture it to let in the wealth of details that the story implies—of art and money, power and presumption. The result is engaging and resonant—but it nonetheless feels incomplete, unfinished. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Xan BrooksMay 21, 2023
May December also comes coloured by the lurid downlight of tabloid culture. It could be a pastiche of a psychological thriller, or a playfully misdirected daytime afternoon soap. Read full review
58
ColliderTherese LacsonMay 22, 2023
While Haynes isn't at his best with May December, a talented cast and an intriguing story make the film an entertaining exercise all the same. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanNov 15, 2023
At times, May December feels like an interrogation of the elusive nature of truth. Read full review
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