The Hate U Give
Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: October 5, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
42
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleCary DarlingOct 3, 2018
A life-affirming rebuttal to apathy, despair and surrender. It’s also one of the year’s most important films. Read full review
100
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 2, 2018
Like the infamous “talk” that opens the film — the conversation that many black parents feel forced to have with their children about how to behave when you are stopped by the police — it is a movie that feels both essential and terribly, terribly sad. Read full review
95
Film ThreatTiffany TchobanianOct 19, 2018
This phenomenal ensemble brilliantly and tactfully tells a story that our society desperately needs to hear during these trying times. Read full review
92
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeOct 4, 2018
It’s powerful, provocative and devastating, blending the incisive power of dramatic emotion with the immediacy of the evening news. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 10, 2018
If Tillman ties it all together a little neatly, he’s already served up a message that feels too fresh and important to dismiss — not of hate but of hope, and faith that even if sharing these stories can’t magically fix what’s broken, telling them still matters. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaOct 5, 2018
The how of Tillman, Mabry, and Wells’s telling distinguishes their story. The Hate U Give should be an epic, and it is: Yes, it’s a teen melodrama, but it’s also an elegantly constructed piece of world-building, a love story, a family history, a sociological spiderweb of cause and effect of the hate referenced in the Tupac-coined titled. If this is what the next wave of YA adaptation will feel like, we are in a good place. Read full review
90
VarietyJessica KiangSep 10, 2018
Without compromising the complexity of the issues raised, or condescending to the youth of its protagonists, The Hate U Give strides with absorbing, intelligent certainty through the desperately dangerous, uneven terrain of racially divided America. Read full review
89
IGNWilliam BibbianiOct 4, 2018
The film has a stirring emotional honesty, and an impressive intelligence about its subject matter. It’s a film that may one day be required viewing for adolescents, and it might just change them the way that these events change its protagonist. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 3, 2018
Screenwriter Audrey Wells adapts Thomas’ YA novel with a sure hand and the supporting cast – especially Hornsby’s deeply protective and loving father, and Sabrina Carter as one of Starr’s white besties who just doesn’t get it – are pitch perfect. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 12, 2018
The Hate U Give is indeed a message movie, and yes, there are a few times when certain characters come close to becoming caricatures. But those are minor drawbacks to a story filled with immediacy and urgency but also so much heart and soul. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 11, 2018
For as naturalistic and real as The Hate U Give is, it goes off the rails just a little bit at the climax to make its grand point about the effect of this kind of climate on innocents, but there is too much heart here to really nitpick at a little hyperbole. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesBrent McKnightOct 10, 2018
Stirring and enraging, The Hate U Give squeezes the air from your lungs. Bleak and heavy, it’s also hopeful and joyous. A palpable manifestation of suppressed anger and frustration too powerful to ignore, it offers a complex look at a complicated problem, one screaming to be addressed. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 3, 2018
All movies have a perspective. The one presented in The Hate U Give is measured but unmistakable. The film is incisive; its manipulation is covert and strategic, engendering feeling without seeming intrusive. Read full review
88
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 2, 2018
One of the rare important teen films that needs to be seen by everybody. Read full review
83
ConsequenceBlake GobleOct 14, 2018
While it deals in the traditional melodramatics, straight from the ‘ol Hollywood emotion factory, Tillman Jr.’s aim seems true. The Hate U Give feels so Right Damn Now that you could leave the theater and see its stories on the nightly news. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubAllison ShoemakerSep 28, 2018
This is a film that’s tense from its earliest moments and tragic shortly thereafter, but never does it feel gratuitously punishing. Read full review
83
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 10, 2018
It’s a film that contains multitudes, and only asks for a world willing to do the same. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 9, 2019
Even if The Hate U Give succumbs to cliché on occasion, it remains a surprisingly bold and thoughtful studio film about racism. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Simran HansNov 8, 2018
Though it leans on the genre beats of melodrama to occasionally clunky effect in order to mine the audience’s tears, it’s impressive how it metabolises these moments of charged emotion in order to make its wider points. Read full review
80
Total FilmNeil SmithOct 29, 2018
An all-too-familiar story is told with empathy and vigour in a film arguing for tolerance, activism and change. Read full review
80
EmpireJimi FamurewaOct 22, 2018
A sophisticated adaptation of a hugely important book that adeptly handles its daunting themes, and provides a platform for a star-making performance from Amandla Stenberg. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 18, 2018
The Hate U Give is a fierce, dynamic movie with a terrific performance from Amandla Stenberg as Starr. Read full review
80
SlateSam AdamsOct 11, 2018
The movie’s most profound performance isn’t Stenberg’s, although their emotional lucidity makes them a good proxy for its intended young adult audience, but Hornsby’s, as a father fighting to prepare his children for a world in which the people who are supposed to protect them can be a profound threat. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicSamantha IncorvaiaOct 10, 2018
This timely movie is a must-see. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 8, 2018
It’s so gripping to watch — as well as being, in places, just delightfully funny — that you never feel you’re being preached to. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 4, 2018
More disturbing than you expect, its story of innocence lost and perspective gained holds us and will not let go. Read full review
80
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 4, 2018
It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg’s incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene. Read full review
80
The GuardianGwilym MumfordSep 10, 2018
This is mass-market entertainment with a radical bent, a loudspeaker blast of a teen movie. Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonSep 10, 2018
It strikes a perfect balance between being a coming-of-age story nestled in a family narrative on the one hand, and a social drama on the other. And in never sacrificing either of those two interests, it becomes a strong example of both. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineOktay Ege Kozak Oct 19, 2018
Casting Amandla Stenberg to carry the project was an inspirational choice: She’s luminous and always captivating in the part, delivering a natural performance that allows easy access to Starr’s soul. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyOct 11, 2018
Only by stepping back is it possible to see how peculiar and relatively original the movie is: A politically radical black youth drama for mainstream consumption; dissonant entertainment for fractious times. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 10, 2018
Mostly, though, the movie succeeds because of the actress at its center. Read full review
75
ObserverOliver JonesOct 9, 2018
Fortunately, it is a nuanced, intense and utterly involving look at how racist policies shape judicial and economic outcomes for families like the Carters, and it doesn’t dumb things down one bit. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloOct 5, 2018
The movie feels instructional without getting too preachy, taking time to explain various inequalities and barriers facing black Americans, typically in exchanges between father and daughter. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonOct 3, 2018
At every turn, Starr's situation gets more nuanced and more engrossing, and in the hands of director George Tillman Jr., the movie maintains a confident, sweeping scope without every losing command, or its nerve. Read full review
75
Vanity FairKatey RichSep 10, 2018
It doesn’t take a dystopian future or a sci-fi bent to present a teenage girl who faces enormous stakes and near-constant potential for violence, and The Hate U Give represents Hollywood’s first real ability to recognize that. Read full review
75
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 10, 2018
Despite the melodramatic ending, you leave the theater wanting to root for the film and its characters. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyAlan ScherstuhlOct 4, 2018
The Hate U Give takes time to focus on the nuances of Starr’s life, on the effort of code-switching, on the layers of self that Starr must sort through in everyday interactions. Read full review
70
Film Journal InternationalAndré HerefordOct 4, 2018
On the strength of its authentic storytelling voice and galvanizing lead performance, The Hate U Give delivers a powerful message that all the rallying and rioting and impassioned pleas in the world won’t change anything if they fall upon deaf ears. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 10, 2018
Viewers who've actually been in the protest trenches may long for a grittier take. But in sanitizing some aspects of this experience, The Hate U Give brings the world of protest and agitation a little closer to those whose privilege has made it relatively easy to ignore. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackOct 19, 2018
Shaping the rhetoric of black activism and black liberation into accessible and demographic-spanning prose is no easy task. It is work which must be undertaken with intelligence, care and, above all, experience. It is no surprise then that the adaptation of Angie Thomas’s debut young-adult novel, The Hate U Give, into a big-budget studio picture loses much of its import in translation. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 17, 2018
More a good movie of its moment than a great film, The Hate U Give is a drama built on messaging and a hand full of terrific, emotionally-charged scenes. Read full review
60
The New York TimesAisha HarrisOct 3, 2018
Ms. Stenberg, Mr. Hornsby and others in the ensemble (including Regina Hall as Starr’s mother, Lisa) are more than capable of exploring their characters’ depths, but a wonky script gets them only so far. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineKeith WatsonSep 29, 2018
The film lays out the complexities of contemporary race relations with a deliberateness that frequently edges over into didacticism. Read full review
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