Palm Trees and Power Lines
Momentum Pictures | Release Date: March 3, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistAndrew CrumpJan 28, 2022
Fearsome and fearless at the same time, Palm Trees and Power Lines practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanJan 28, 2022
Palm Trees and Power Lines finds a truth, one it wrenches out of an experience. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 1, 2023
With Palm Trees and Power Lines, Dack has created a haunting portrait of how trust is manipulated and abused; the trust she builds up with her characters and audience, however, remains steadfast, resulting in a film of disarming candor and power. Read full review
87
Paste MagazineChloe WalkerOct 11, 2022
While Palm Trees and Power Lines certainly functions as a cautionary tale, it derives the intensity of its power from the uncomfortable degree to which we’re compelled to empathize with Lea as she makes a string of increasingly perilous decisions. Read full review
83
ColliderChase HutchinsonMar 2, 2023
The final scene all the way up to the last line hits like a truck. It leaves wreckage in its wake as the psychological and emotional scars linger for us as an audience just as they do for its central character caught in the grasp of a cruel world. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMar 7, 2023
The filmmaking maintains its discretion and unblinking restraint even in its most terrifying passage, shot with an implacable calm that renders it all the more unbearable. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredMartin CarrOct 25, 2022
Expanded from a short that Dack wrote and directed previously, this mini-budget indie effort slowly draws audiences in through vicarious observation. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenJan 31, 2022
It’s a compelling, edgy story of exploitation with no easy answers. Read full review
80
Film ThreatSabina Dana PlasseJan 31, 2022
Dack’s work as a director is on the screen, in the characters, and widely successful with how the actors convey her vision. Her writing and directing of Palm Trees and Power Lines will make a difference because it’s organic, original, and essential. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeJan 28, 2022
With its stark portrayal of abuse, Palm Trees and Power Lines won’t be for everyone. But the director’s assured approach to a thorny topic, the way she needles at assumptions about grooming and the care with which she treats Lea’s story will linger with me for a long while. Read full review
80
The GuardianAdrian HortonJan 28, 2022
It’s trite to say a debut performance is a revelation, but the whole film simply does not work without McInerny, who is fully convincing as a girl on an emotional precipice. It’s an astoundingly calibrated turn, one of barely lidded emotions that eventually skitter about Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussMar 2, 2023
Palm Trees and Power Lines feels like an honest story about grooming, which is not only valuable in and of itself but kind of crucial at a time when hate-mongers have perverted the concept for political ends. But then, why see a movie that’s good-for-you important and profoundly uncomfortable? Because its humanity and artistry never falter. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandJan 28, 2022
Throughout the film, both Dack and her revelatory star teeter through shifting concepts, black and white, yes and no, that only grow more jarring and tense as Palm Trees and Power Lines unfolds. Read full review
70
Screen RantNadir SamaraMar 10, 2023
Palm Trees and Power Lines is eerie, provocative, and thought-provoking. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Roxana HadadiMar 7, 2023
The relationship McInerny and Tucker build is so convincing in its mixture of exploitation and yearning that Palm Trees and Power Lines capably secures what Lea desires most too: your attention. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsMar 2, 2023
Long before Palm Trees becomes an outright film about sex work, it establishes itself as a film about the dire social transaction that sex can be — an old story, tragic every time, and effective here. Read full review
67
The Film StageJordan RaupMar 1, 2023
While Palm Trees and Power Lines functions as a harrowing lesson for the worst-case scenarios of grooming, there’s an emptiness to the experience that, while reflecting our protagonist’s journey, results in a film that doesn’t feel fully formed. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comKatie RifeMar 3, 2023
These events unfold with a sense of sickening inevitability, and when the scenes we all know are coming finally come, they’re as icky and hard to watch as they should be. But beyond simple documentation, the movie’s intentions are fuzzy. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMar 7, 2023
It’s a contemporary story that feels as if it has been worn away to a featureless, atemporal perfection of the sort that has been handed down, in the industry, through producers’ dictates and story conferences, and which filters into the world of independent filmmaking by way of film schools and handbooks, rounds of workshops and mentoring. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 2, 2023
Dack takes obvious care to make sure that the filmmaking and camerawork don’t further exploit the character. Yet it’s a bummer that the ethical and political thoughtfulness that she extends during Lea’s most harrowingly vulnerable moments doesn’t extend to the rest of the movie. Read full review
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