Requiem for a Dream
Artisan Entertainment | Release Date: October 6, 2000 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
7
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.
100
Philadelphia InquirerDesmond Ryan
Aronofsky has fashioned a chilling vision that lives up to the caustic irony of its title and gives us a nightmare that is not lightly forgotten. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
May be the first movie to fully capture the way that drugs dislocate us from ourselves. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleBob Graham
He (Aronofsky) has put together a phantasmagoria of self-destructive obsession that is so visually astounding it becomes its own saving grace. Otherwise, we might not be able to bear it. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Burstyn is astonishing, forsaking all vanity to make silly biddy Sara a fully dimensioned human being. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Be warned: it's a downer, and a knockout. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
A work of art whose beauty has the eternal power of redemption. Read full review
90
Dallas ObserverBill Gallo
A fluent, intelligent piece of work whose sex and violence are anything but gratuitous, and exactly the kind of highly personal, no-holds-barred vision of life on the ragged edge that independents always aspire to but rarely have the goods to achieve. Read full review
88
New York PostJonathan Foreman
A powerful fable about love and addiction that manages to be darkly humorous when it isn't graphic or harrowing in the extreme. Read full review
88
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
An unrelentingly dark vision that's as hard to watch as it is impossible to walk away from. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Easily the most searing movie-going experience of the year. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
The tremendous power of Aronofsky's filmmaking -- its omnivorous omnipotence, if that makes any sense -- has the curious effect of diluting its emotional impact. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleSarah Hepola
Haunts the memory long after you've left the theatre. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Often, Requiem for a Dream is as technically inventive and daring as the Scottish heroin film "Trainspotting," but it has more resonance and feeling. And when Burstyn is on screen, it often becomes heartbreaking. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
May be an elaborate stunt, a bungee jump, but even so, it's forceful enough to leave a rare palpitating residue. Read full review
70
SlateDavid Edelstein
Becomes increasingly unwatchable -- not just bleak but punishing, as if the director wants to fry your circuits along with his characters'. Read full review
70
Film.comPeter Brunette
Love it or hate it -- and I suspect, frankly, most people are going to hate it -- this is like no other film you've ever seen. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
It’s technically striking filmmaking, to be sure, but what it’s presenting is nothing that many people will want to look at. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderLisa Alspector
This bleak vision directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi") is pointless with good reason. Read full review
63
San Francisco ExaminerWesley Morris
It's one of the most beautifully unpleasant movies ever made - its reverse charge being that it is no fun at all. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Aronofsky has given us a well-acted, gorgeously overwrought and luridly entertaining exploitation flick -- a midnight movie for future generations. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
While director Aronofsky pistol-whips your attention with his style, the characters (mostly relegated to human mannequins in Aronofsky's visual schemes) suffer big time. Read full review
60
TNT RoughCutJ. Rentilly
Chilling and technically proficient and, also, fairly hollow. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
To be fair, Aronofsky has a knack for stylistic overkill, and his hammering onslaught is undeniably riveting, at first anyway. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Solid acting helps the story stay earthbound when Aronofsky's filmmaking gets addicted to its own flashy cynicism, but the picture sometimes seems as dazed and confused as the situations it wants to criticize. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyPaul Malcolm
Far too complex and provoking. Read full review
49
Mr. ShowbizKevin Maynard
Never the heart-wrenching emotional experience it seems intended to be. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeJay Carr
It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater. Read full review
30
Film.comErnest Hardy
Too self-consciously dark, too aware of its long, murky, art-designed descent into the underbelly of America's addictive personality. Read full review
20
Washington PostStephen Hunter
In the end the movie goes nowhere a hundred movies haven't already been and tells us nothing we don't already know. It does so with so much violent energy, however, it's like four brutal years at film school crammed into an hour and a half. Read full review
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