The Hateful Eight
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: December 25, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 51 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
12
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
USA TodayBrian TruittJan 21, 2016
While not as cinematically game-changing as Pulp Fiction or as gore-spattered as the Kill Bill films, The Hateful Eight doles out all of Tarantino’s favorite things. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorDec 24, 2015
Tarantino is a masterful storyteller, painter of cinematic images and director of actors; the script, the cinematography and the cast of outlandish characters, created by a powerful ensemble dashingly led by Jackson, can’t be faulted in any way. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2015
This is a high-wire thriller, full of masterfully executed twists, captivating dialogue, and a wildly entertaining narrative that gallops along at a pace to make three hours evaporate in an instant. Best film of the year? Yes. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 23, 2015
While it’s not as audacious or as provocative or as brutally violent as “Django Unchained,” it’s still an exhilarating moviegoing experience, filled with wickedly dark humor, nomination-worthy performances and a jigsaw puzzle plot that keeps us guessing until the bloody, brilliant end. Read full review
100
HitfixDrew McWeenyDec 22, 2015
Beautifully photographed to take full advantage of the corners of a 2:76:1 aspect ratio, often hiding key character details in the background of shots in a way that demands a second viewing, this is a gorgeous piece of filmcraft all the way around. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 16, 2015
The Hateful Eight is a parlour-room epic, an entire nation in a single room, a film steeped in its own filminess but at the same time vital, riveting and real. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 15, 2015
Tarantino has created another breathtakingly stylish and clever film, a Jacobean western, intimate yet somehow weirdly colossal, once again releasing his own kind of unwholesome crazy-funny-violent nitrous oxide into the cinema auditorium for us all to inhale. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyDec 15, 2015
This is the writer-director’s take on the betrayed promise of America: a perverse vision of sadistic men comforted by false causes. Read full review
90
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlDec 15, 2015
The film's chatty, ingratiating, and then howlingly mean. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushMatt SingerDec 15, 2015
Those willing to put in the time will find a movie that is both beautiful and hideous, funny and shocking, and even thoughtful on occasion. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 15, 2015
The movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 24, 2015
Working from a self-penned screenplay, Tarantino has come up with one of the wordiest Westerns on record, and even some of his most diehard fans may grimace at the film’s occasionally slow pace. But The Hateful Eight more than compensates through its intriguing characters, ominous atmosphere and palpable suspense. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 23, 2015
But Tarantino isn’t glorifying the ugliness; he’s condemning it. He just wants to put on a grand show at the same time. “Are you not entertained?” he seems to be asking. Yes. Yes, we are. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 22, 2015
At three hours, this Western whodunit can feel like too much of a good thing. But Tarantino writes like a flamethrower. His incendiary dialogue feels like profane poetry. And the dude thinks big. Read full review
83
ConsequenceJustin GerberDec 22, 2015
There are a couple hiccups that prevent the movie from elevating to the classic status of your Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fictions. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerJan 11, 2016
On a par with "Inglourious Basterds" and "Django Unchained," The Hateful Eight starts low-key but ultimately delivers big, bold, blood-soaked rewards. Roll on, QT Western number three. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamJan 4, 2016
The Hateful Eight brands the western with a big ‘QT’. All you’d expect from a Tarantino movie and more besides. Saddle up. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 23, 2015
My personal view is that Quentin Tarantino is now permanently high on his own supply, but you could just as well say that he has succeeded in reinventing the art film. Is it worth it to put yourself through the brutal and incoherent three-hour ordeal of The Hateful Eight for its moments of brilliance and its ultimate catharsis? Jesus, don’t look at me. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 23, 2015
A highly enjoyable -- and, for better or for worse, a very Tarantino -- movie. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 18, 2015
It’s as pure an expression of Tarantino’s voice as he’s ever mustered—easy to savor, even if the aftertaste leaves a trace of nasty bitterness. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonDec 15, 2015
The Hateful Eight’s impact expands and grows richer the further away you are from the experience of watching it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 15, 2015
There is absolutely no doubt about who wrote the elaborate, pungent, profane and often funny dialogue that a fine cast chews over and spits out with evident glee, nor as to who staged the ongoing bloodbath that becomes a gusher in the final stretch. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovDec 23, 2015
Overall, it’s a satisfying wintry treat, as only Quentin Tarantino can do it. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJan 1, 2016
Even if you don’t get the references, you can enjoy the ripely robust acting – especially Russell, Jackson and Leigh – and Tarantino’s storytelling skill. I could have done without the bad-boy excesses, which always seem like the mark of his immaturity, but the rest of the film comes from a mature and capable artist. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 24, 2015
This is a movie that’s 168 minutes only because Quentin Tarantino is an uncontainable Rabelasian. He believes that more is more. And sometimes it is. But a truly great craftsman knows where to locate the line. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 23, 2015
Needless to say, if “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained” were too much for you, The Hateful Eight won’t be any easier. This is a big step beyond. Read full review
75
The VergeTasha RobinsonDec 22, 2015
The Hateful Eight is a feature-length battle between thoughtful sophistication and the filmmaker's sloppiest and most self-indulgent instincts. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJaime N. ChristleyDec 15, 2015
The premise of the film is simple, but it's a simplicity that can only attract complications, as simple plans are apt to do, in an atmosphere of foreboding and the macabre. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnDec 15, 2015
No matter how absorbing its individual scenes, however, The Hateful Eight is often hindered by Tarantino's confidence in the material. For every gripping sequence, there's an abrupt development or undercooked throwaway line. Read full review
75
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeDec 15, 2015
The Hateful Eight may frustrate some of his more literally sanguine supporters, but it’s nonetheless an entertaining piece of dialogue-driven theater — with the occasional rifle-shot to the head. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 24, 2015
Tarantino seems to have no shortage of creativity or inspiration. What he needs to find is someone who isn’t afraid to occasionally say, “Cut.” Read full review
70
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczDec 22, 2015
Weird, wild and way-too-long. Read full review
67
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezDec 17, 2015
It’s arguably Tarantino’s ugliest and most political film, but not his best by some distance. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 21, 2015
Stretched to three hours, including a pointless (old fashioned) overture and intermission, does it live up to the “Cinema Event” Tarantino has hyped it as? Hell no. It’s just a minimalist Spaghetti Western suffering from auteur bloat — sometimes entertaining, with not even remotely enough story of action to support its insuperable length and gravitas. Read full review
60
CineVueBen NicholsonJan 21, 2016
The Hateful Eight is easily Tarantino's most fantastic film in terms of its visuals, its period detail and its award-worthy score, but it suffers from the director's common pitfalls while lacking the verve that so often carries him through. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 24, 2015
Maybe I’m repeating myself: The Hateful Eight is a Quentin Tarantino movie. But Mr. Tarantino is also repeating himself, spinning his wheels here in a way he has rarely done before. None of his other films venture so far into tedium or manage to get in their own way so frequently. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 24, 2015
It’s fun for a while to see Kurt Russell hamming it up behind his voluminous mustache or Samuel L. Jackson once again raising rafters by laying down the law. But the film is pointless, even as entertainment, because it builds to nothing more than a comic book blood bath. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 15, 2015
The Hateful Eight doesn’t have enough ideas. Set almost entirely in a snowed-in saloon, the story’s so spare it doesn’t warrant either its three-hour running time (including an overture and intermission) or his use of 70mm projection. It’s narratively and visually claustrophobic. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 28, 2015
By the end of The Hateful Eight, its status as a tale of mystery and its deference to classic Westerns have all but disappeared, worn down by the grind of its sadistic vision. That is the Tarantino deal: by blowing out folks’ brains, he wants to blow our minds. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenDec 25, 2015
Yep, we’re in Tarantino territory for sure: way too self-indulgently long, and way, way overboard with that N-word. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianJeff BakerDec 23, 2015
This time the talk was cheap, not witty or sharp. Tarantino the writer let his gift of gab get away from him and didn't give his script a close enough edit. Tarantino the director didn't do enough with the static setting; the flashbacks don't help and the big timeshift that's meant to explain everything that's happened feels incomplete. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 23, 2015
The Hateful Eight is an ultrawide bore. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzDec 22, 2015
An impressive display of film craft and a profoundly ugly movie—so gleeful in its violence and so nihilistic in its world view that it feels as though the director is daring his detractors to see it as a confirmation of their worst fears about his art. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 22, 2015
An epic work of self-indulgence and smug riffing, stringing together tropes from TV and screen westerns and closed-room whodunits, The Hateful Eight announces itself with all the pomp and circumstance of a mid-century cinema spectacle. Read full review
40
SlateDana StevensJan 21, 2016
The Hateful Eight is bold, gorgeous, verbally clever, morally repellent, and, in some way I am still struggling to put my finger on, possibly somehow evil. Any movie that inspires mixed feelings that intense can, I suppose, be said to have done its work on the viewer. But I’m not sure the work The Hateful Eight performed on me was what the filmmaker intended or that it’s an operation I would consent to again. Read full review
40
TimeStephanie ZacharekJan 12, 2016
Its glorious, snow-capped visuals aside, The Hateful Eight comes off as haggard and atrophied. It’s bloodless even in the midst of all its bloodiness; its characters are devoid of nobility, even the horrible kind. These are uglies not even a mother could love. Read full review
37
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 23, 2015
The Hateful Eight never lives up to its intriguing opening minutes and provocative premise, its wide-screen canvas wasted on a talky, claustrophobic chamber piece that descends, in due Tarantino fashion, into a mean-spirited slough of bloodshed and mayhem. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 23, 2015
You wonder what he has up his sleeve in The Hateful Eight, but gorgeous as that sleeve might be, what’s up it is crap. The movie is a lot of gore over a lot of nothing. I hope that won’t be Tarantino’s epitaph. Read full review
25
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 24, 2015
Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is vile art, bludgeoning viewers for three hours with indefensibly gratuitous race baiting and blood. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickDec 22, 2015
The Hateful Eight is basically an expensive vanity project allowing Tarantino to expound on his bizarre theories about race relations. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 23, 2015
The Hateful Eight wears out its welcome well before the halfway point, leaving the equivalent of a whole other movie to sit — and suffer — through. Read full review
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