Nightbreed

Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: February 16, 1990

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

40	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Devin Faraci

While Cronenberg works, the two other main humans - Boone and his girlfriend, are flat and boring, mostly due to uninspired performances. Still, that's like blasting Star Wars for Mark Hamill's acting. While this isn't as great as Star Wars, it's in the same vein, and if Nightbreed had made some loot, I think we would have gotten some very cool sequels with a fantastic mythology. Read full review

Noel Murray

At its best, Nightbreed is like a living version of a coffee-table book, with each page filled with tentacled, quilled, or moon-faced monsters. Read full review

EmpireWilliam Thomas

The background is more intriguing than the stumbling up-front story, and monster watchers will get full use of the freeze-frame facility. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Barker spins grisly fantasy out of sexual obsession, yet his style here couldn’t be less obsessive. It’s cluttered and rather incoherent, as though the trailers to four different horror movies had been spliced together. Read full review

Johanna Steinmetz

Barker unleashes the full force of his special effects crew and the movie implodes in a cataclysm of jelly-fleshed creepy-crawlies. It simply loses its grip. [17 Feb 1990, p.3C]

Michael Wilmington

In Nightbreed neither the coyly horrible killers nor the horribly coy monsters register strongly enough. It's a dark beast with a flabby hide. Read full review

Juan Carlos Coto

The movie is all visuals and atmosphere without an effective structure. It doesn't move you, it's on display. [24 Feb 1990, p.E5]

Caryn James

Surrounded by Mr. Barker's visual clutter and lack of narrative energy, Mr. Cronenberg's presence only highlights the difference between a gruesome but first-rate psychological horror story like Dead Ringers and a mediocrity like Nightbreed. Read full review

Richard Harrington

Barker the filmmaker resorts to most of the horror cliches he chillingly sidesteps in his writing. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Writer-director Clive Barker's Nightbreed is a mess. Self-indulgent horror pic [from his novel Cabal] could be the Heaven's Gate of its genre, of obvious interest to diehard monster fans but a turnoff for mainstream audiences. Read full review

Jay Scott

Sad to say, poor old Nightbreed fails even as failure - it's bad, but it's not memorably bad. The odor it emits is less the stench of an eternal hell than the stink of a passing purgatory. If nothing is forgiven by the time you've done your time in the theatre, all is certainly forgotten. [20 Feb 1990]

Staff (Not Credited)

Barker calls his shambolic, uninvolving narrative 'scattershot'; put less kindly, it's as explosive and directionless as a blunderbuss. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Besides a lot of scenic driving in and around Calgary, Nightbreed does have its fair share of sound and fury, not to mention blood and entrails. But it plays as if Barker were making it up as he went along, despite the film's having been based on his own novel Cabal. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

It bombs, but not for lack of trying. It bombs for too much trying. [17 Feb 1990, p.C3]