The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Lionsgate | Release Date: November 17, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
19
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
40
ABC NewsPeter TraversNov 17, 2023
It’s a risk doing a prequel to this hit film franchise without the power surge of star Jennifer Lawrence and the safe and sorry result, set 64 years before Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen ever drew breath, is seriously overlong and underwhelming. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicMeredith G. WhiteDec 20, 2023
While Blyth's portrayal of a well-despised character can't go unnoticed and Zegler brings brightness to a bleak world, the issue is there isn't enough time to develop their relationship and make sense of Snow's turn from normal to bloodthirsty. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesNov 15, 2023
The problem in adaptation here is that Collins’ source book accessed Snow’s inner monologue, a churn of competing emotions and priorities at odds with his unruffled outer self. Without that insight, Snow’s evolution from war-scarred orphan to what Donald Sutherland is playing in the original quadrilogy is rendered as blank as, well, snow. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 15, 2023
A visually underwhelming saga that tests (and fails) our patience with a whopping 2-hour-and-37-minute running time — and even with all that storytelling room, engages in some whiplash changes of character in the final act that make little sense and feel forced and contrived, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they had to draw a connection between this story and subsequent events the audience already knows about. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 16, 2023
"Songbirds and Snakes” takes its job SUPERseriously, with more solemnity than imaginative excitement. Read full review
40
EmpireHanna FlintNov 9, 2023
It has a few laughs and some stylish outfits, but this is unfortunately a shallow prequel, one which fails to breathe new life into the Hunger Games franchise. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshNov 17, 2023
There’s so much that works about The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, it’s unfortunate that it’s all been crammed into one overly-long film. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Roxana HadadiNov 17, 2023
It’s all thematically muddled, narratively regurgitated stuff that makes the film feel like a nearly three-hour backsliding of this franchise’s onetime political forcefulness. Read full review
58
Original-CinLiz BraunNov 15, 2023
Despite some interesting action scenes, the movie is far too long at two hours and 40 minutes. Worse yet, you’re always aware that you’re watching a movie. Read full review
50
SlashfilmJeremy MathaiNov 9, 2023
For all the storylines it juggles — part love story, part franchise extension, and part treatise on how mind-numbingly awful group projects in class can be (seriously, this early section might actually be the highlight of the movie) — The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes feels caught between its humbler, more character-driven aims and the blockbuster expectations of reinvigorating a brand. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubEric FranciscoNov 9, 2023
The Hunger Games is all about televised misery, authoritarianism, the blood cost to shape a better world, and the discomforting shade of the Venn Diagram they share. It’s only The Hunger Games’ own blinding success as a massive IP that threatens to derail the value inherent to its messaging. Read full review
55
The Daily BeastNick SchagerNov 9, 2023
This rote affair would deserve the designation “for fans only,” if not for the sneaking suspicion that even they won’t be wowed by this return trip to Panem. Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 9, 2023
Jason Schwartzman, as “weatherman and amateur magician” Lucretius Flickerman, lands some surprisingly good one-liners. Their performances hint at the true narcissism of Panem – something you’ll struggle to find in any of the limp, neutered romantics of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Read full review
60
The New York TimesAmy NicholsonNov 15, 2023
Our world so hauntingly echoes Collins’s fictions that the film, shot last summer, moves us to spend its gargantuan running time reflecting on contemporary headlines, mourning the generational tragedy of anger and fear begetting anger and fear. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 20, 2023
Davis’s deranged games designer Dr Volumnia Gaul and Jason Schwartzman’s showboating compere Lucky Flickerman justify the price of admission. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinNov 9, 2023
The Hunger Games prequel plunges us back into the futuristic empire of Panem – but fails to live up to the first films of the franchise. Read full review
40
TheWrapTomris LafflyNov 9, 2023
“The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” unlike the stellar predecessors of the series, feels curiously starved for real insights into the opposing shades of the human soul. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 17, 2023
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, directed by Francis Lawrence, strives to offer spectacle, drama, and excitement. But it’s really just a tired rehash, albeit an extravagant one, this time with less appealing characters. As dystopias go, it’s a real bummer. Read full review
60
Total FilmKevin HarleyNov 9, 2023
Davis, Dinklage, Zegler, and the Games thrill, but Snow doesn’t quite summon the substance needed to fulfil this long-haul prequel’s ambitions. Read full review
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