The Canyons
IFC Films | Release Date: August 2, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
36
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
10
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
33
IndieWireEric KohnJul 30, 2013
Instead of commenting on the vapidity of the film industry, Paul Schrader's miscast, poorly executed and utterly soulless drama is an example of the failing art form it seeks to indict. Though it has real ideas, Schrader and his team never manage to put them into action. Read full review
30
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 15, 2013
Paul Schrader, the once-brilliant screenwriter of such films as “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” has fashioned a movie that seems to exist to be repugnant. Maybe that’s the point; it was written by Bret Easton Ellis. Nearly every character in this movie is unlikable. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranAug 8, 2013
The Canyons is a bad accident everyone saw coming, and now it is here. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 3, 2013
The Canyons isn’t just bad, it’s rank — and it takes a peculiar sort of integrity to denude the frame of life to the point where it smells to heaven. Read full review
30
NPRIan BuckwalterAug 2, 2013
Judging from the lack of care that went into making this one, I'm not so sure how much Schrader cares about the movies anymore either. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJul 28, 2013
Far from the renegade, boundary-pushing, sexually explicit sensation that its makers have been suggesting, The Canyons is a lame, one-dimensional and ultimately dreary look at peripheral Hollywood types not worth anyone's time either onscreen or in real life. Read full review
25
USA TodayClaudia PuigAug 10, 2013
The Canyons is billed as an erotic thriller, but the sexcapades of these empty-headed twentysomethings are far more likely to elicit yawns than titillation. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireAug 2, 2013
Maybe the joke’s on us, and all the pre-release hype suggesting that a micro-budget train wreck was barreling our way was merely part of the marketing strategy. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 1, 2013
Stephen Rodrick's New York Times article about the making of The Canyons had humor, suspense and propulsion. They should have made that movie. What we have here is dead on arrival. Read full review
25
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 30, 2013
The cavernous emptiness of The Canyons cannot sustain itself, and it makes for a mostly flat, strained and uninvolving experience (not helped by the pace which makes 90 minutes, feels like a sluggish two hours). Read full review
20
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJul 30, 2013
She (Lohan) isn’t the best thing about this awful, lounged-out drama — it has no best thing — but in her defense, Lohan has been atrociously directed, allowed to get away with the worst aspects of her vocal-fry laziness, and trotted out like a symbolic objet d’art. Read full review
12
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 15, 2013
The best acting in The Canyons is done by the porn star. That might be all you need to know about this film, which is the kind of vapid, self-consciously artsy, waste-of-time movie that might never have seen the light of day (or the dark of theater) and would have gone straight to VOD were it not for the triple-threat name-recognition trio of the actress Lindsay Lohan, the director Paul Schrader and the writer Bret Easton Ellis. Read full review
12
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJul 30, 2013
Paul Schrader and Brett Easton Ellis don't have the sense of play this kind of narrative of one-upmanship requires, as we're never allowed to enjoy the characters' misdeeds. Read full review
0
New York PostLou LumenickAug 1, 2013
Paul Schrader’s The Canyons is not the worst movie of 2013 — it's marginally better than "InAPPpropriate Comedy" and "Scary Movie 5," two even worse bombs that Lindsay Lohan also lent her rapidly diminishing talents to — but it is surely the most boring I’ve seen. Read full review
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