Prisoners
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: September 20, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
41
Mixed:
9
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeySep 19, 2013
Exciting, terrifying, worrisome stuff saturates every second of Prisoners, holding you captive, keeping you guessing until the bitter end. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedSep 17, 2013
When it comes to thrillers, this one is as good as it gets. Not for the squeamish, but for anyone who loves movies, it’s too exhilarating to miss. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanSep 9, 2013
The thriller that's exciting, cathartic, and powerfully disturbing. Prisoners is that type of movie. It's rooted in 40 years of Hollywood revenge films, yet it also breaks audacious new ground. Read full review
91
The Film StageChristopher SchobertOct 27, 2016
Prisoners might be the most shockingly dark studio release since Fight Club, a grim, unsettling, occasionally convoluted, but undeniably gripping thriller. Read full review
91
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezAug 31, 2013
The picture is often graphic and pulls no punches in its disturbing violence, but its unflinching nature gives it a memorable sear that won't soon be forgotten. Read full review
90
Screen DailyJohn HazeltonNov 9, 2016
An impressive US debut for French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, dramatic thriller Prisoners is a potent mix of suspense, emotion and intrigue that draws intense performances from leads Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 19, 2013
Prisoners is the kind of movie that can quiet a room full of casual thrill-seekers. It absorbs and controls your attention with such assurance that you hold your breath for fear of distracting the people on screen, exhaling in relief or amazement at each new revelation Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid DenbySep 16, 2013
Villeneuve has what I keep looking for in directors: a charged sense of the way the world actually works. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterStephen FarberAug 31, 2013
Prisoners can at times be a hard film to watch, but thanks to all the talent involved, it’s even harder to shake off. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovSep 25, 2013
It's a veritable shoo-in for an Oscar nod this year, and one of the more disturbing films to come out of a major studio in ages. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 9, 2016
Prisoners is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickSep 30, 2013
Is torture ever justifiable? A twisty, compelling, brilliantly acted (if sometimes difficult to watch) thriller, Prisoners, asks this question not in the usual contemporary context — anti-terrorism — but instead as a gruesome option deployed as a response to every parent’s worst nightmare. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigSep 19, 2013
Prisoners is infused with a poetic intensity that's rare in American thrillers. The closest cinematic comparisons would be "Zodiac," "In the Bedroom" and "Mystic River." Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 19, 2013
The cast is remarkable. Five of the seven principal cast members own previous Oscar nominations. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 19, 2013
Even with the stretched-out running time, Prisoners is one of the most intense moviegoing experiences of the year. You’ll never forget it. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 19, 2013
Some will write off Prisoners as shameless exploitation. But like Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," to which it's been compared, Prisoners is so artfully shaped and forcefully developed that objections fade. Read full review
84
Film.comWilliam GossSep 5, 2013
Rarely a moment is ever wasted, a consequence ignored, and though the climax is a corker, the final shot is even better. Prisoners requires and rewards your attention in equal measure. Be ready. Read full review
83
HitfixDrew McWeenyNov 9, 2016
Prisoners pulls no punches, and it wants to leave a mark on you, and it is a testament to all involved that it manages to accomplish those things so well. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnSep 1, 2013
Before all else, Villneuve's grim chronicle of the fallout when two young girls vanish in a small town succeeds at crafting one powerfully suspenseful moment after another. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredSam WoolfNov 9, 2016
Prisoners isn’t bringing much new to the tradition of crime thrillers and missing children horror stories, but it does speak mightily to how quality of craft separates an airplane page-turner from a minor triumph of pulp poetry. Read full review
80
Total FilmEmma DibdinSep 25, 2013
A simmering pressure cooker of a thriller, Prisoners is an unforgiving but emotionally rewarding experience sustained by powerhouse performances, taut scripting and Villeneuve’s tonally assured direction. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonSep 19, 2013
There's a near-sacred history in Hollywood of non-U.S.- born directors providing fresh perspectives on America. Miloš Forman. Alfred Hitchcock. Ang Lee. Ernst Lubitsch. Billy Wilder. For Prisoners, a stress-inducing trip into child abduction, the director is Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who gives us an American "hero" guaranteed to push many buttons, many times, and who might not have been allowed to be quite so awful, under a different director's lens. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierSep 19, 2013
Dano, Bello, Howard, Davis and Leo — the last nearly unrecognizable — are equally strong. Villeneuve, whose last film was the Oscar-nominated “Incendies,” uses them all perfectly, and Prisoners works best when it’s not what you thought it was going to be. But even on familiar ground, it’s hard to let go of. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 18, 2013
Oh, and the title? It could be an apt description for almost any character in the movie at one time or another. The satisfaction is in finding out who, if anyone, will be set free. Read full review
80
The GuardianPaul MacInnesSep 6, 2013
In his first English language film, Quebeçois director Denis Villeneuve has produced a masterful thriller that is also an engrossing study of a smalltown America battered by recession, fear and the unrelenting elements. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceySep 19, 2013
Subtly crafted and compelling, but it suffers from a case of split personality. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 19, 2013
As gripping as it is grueling, with performances that swing for the fences and a central mystery that seems an unresolvable tangle of knots until those knots come undone in a somewhat forced final act. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubSep 19, 2013
It's difficult to remember a recent movie that soared so high, before plummeting with a series of bad story choices. But the end result is still a strong piece of cinema, a failure only if you dwell on what might have been. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerDavid HiltbrandSep 19, 2013
A devastating psychological thriller, Prisoners pulls us deep into our worst fear: the Amber Alert. Then it holds us under. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanSep 19, 2013
Roger Deakins, probably the best living cinematographer never to win an Oscar (he’s 0-for-10), was behind the camera. So the picture never lets us down visually, even when the story occasionally strays. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 19, 2013
Some will take it and like it, all the way to the heart of darkness. Others may feel they've been jacked with, manipulated. Villeneuve collaborates with unusual sensitivity with his actors. The script operates on one level; the interpreters on another, higher level. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreSep 18, 2013
Prisoners is never less than engrossing. It’ll keep you guessing. It’s just too bad that the last thirty minutes make us feel like the prisoners, here. Read full review
70
ScreenCrushMatt SingerNov 9, 2016
Prisoners is too nuanced to dismiss, but too silly to take seriously. Read full review
70
The DissolveNoel MurraySep 18, 2013
What makes Prisoners more potent than its oft-implausible mystery should allow is the way Villeneuve lingers over the textures of a terrible event. Read full review
70
VarietyScott FoundasAug 31, 2013
A spellbinding, sensationally effective thriller with a complex moral center. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerSep 20, 2013
For all its pretensions and intermittent power, is essentially high-grade claptrap. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianM. E. RussellSep 19, 2013
At its best, Prisoners dwells on the ways the characters affected by the case are held mentally captive -- by conviction, compulsion, procedure, skewed beliefs, rage, and grief -- and how each character's blind spot and/or maniacal focus furthers or frustrates the search for the girls. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskySep 18, 2013
It makes for a compelling viewing experience, thanks to Villeneuve’s formal chops and the uniformly strong performances. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleySep 20, 2013
Aspects of Prisoners are effective, but for the most part it's rather ridiculous (despite the fact that it clearly wants to be taken super-seriously), and there's an overwrought quality to much of the acting. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezSep 19, 2013
Too bad, then, that after two hours of such relentless tension, Prisoners starts revealing its secrets to progressively hokier effect. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSep 15, 2013
Possibly year's most immaculate-looking drivel, a prismatically shot whodunit abundant in red herrings, but lacking in moral contemplation. Read full review
60
EmpireDan JolinSep 23, 2013
A decent, cogent, greyly atmospheric thriller with something to say about War-On-Terror America. Read full review
60
NPRIan BuckwalterSep 20, 2013
Loki is a skilled creation, but lacking that sense of why, it's hard not to think of him as an artistic construct rather than a character. The same goes for Prisoners, a work of impressive craftsmanship that winds up making us think too much about how it was fashioned rather than what it has to say. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichSep 17, 2013
The uniformly showy performances (Acting with a capital ‘A’) are what do in Prisoners more than anything. Read full review
60
TimeRichard CorlissSep 9, 2013
This is the rough cut of a good movie, and a splendid opportunity wasted. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadaySep 19, 2013
Try as it might to entertain serious notions of manhood, evil and original sin, Prisoners works most effectively as Hollywood hypocrisy at its most sleek, efficient and meretricious. It’s stylish, high-minded hokum. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallSep 18, 2013
It is well acted bunk, led by Hugh Jackman's righteous raging as the father of a missing girl, abducting a suspect (Paul Dano) to pummel and scald a confession from him. If only solving the case and ending this movie sooner was that simple. Read full review
40
CineVuePatrick GambleNov 9, 2016
A handsomely crafted, yet overacted revenge tale with a broken moral compass, Prisoners fails to build upon its taut atmosphere of suspense with anything of particular social value. Read full review
40
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonSep 17, 2013
Torn between making sense and arguing that the world itself makes no sense, Prisoners is a captive of its own ambitions. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 6, 2013
Flexing some of that Jean Valjean resolve, but with a payload of untrammelled, Wolverine-like rage behind it, Jackman comes closest to shouldering the movie, without ever seriously threatening to make it work. Read full review
38
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSep 19, 2013
It’s preposterous schlock masquerading as art. Read full review
30
SalonAndrew O'HehirSep 19, 2013
Don’t get me wrong, I like trash just fine, and the twisty-loo, triple-abduction plot of Prisoners certainly kept me watching to the end. (You’ll figure out some of screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski’s plot twists, but not all of them.) It’s the imitation-David Fincher pretentiousness that gets on my nerves. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 16, 2013
Villeneuve is trying like hell to elevate what turns out to be a dumb genre picture. Read full review
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