The Light Between Oceans
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: September 2, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
20
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
EmpireAnna SmithNov 7, 2016
Vikander and Fassbender are riveting in a handsome period drama that begins beautifully, but becomes increasingly contrived as it tries to wring as much drama as possible from its set-up. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 9, 2016
Whether the film cuts it as a fully functioning weepie is another matter. I was in pieces after “Blue Valentine,” and had to be swept up from the floor of the cinema by the guy who retrieves the spilled popcorn, but the The Light Between Oceans left me disappointingly intact. Read full review
60
SlateDana StevensSep 1, 2016
Cianfrance’s gift for allowing his actors to create relationships — with one another, with the camera, and with the stark landscape that surrounds them — makes The Light Between Oceans an unusually captivating romantic drama, at least until that last-act slide into self-sabotaging bathos. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghSep 1, 2016
For all of Cianfrance’s seriousness, the material proves too essentially melodramatic, hokey and self-serious to save. No gorgeous cinematography and no cast, no matter how A-list, can ultimately save this material from itself. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeAug 31, 2016
While it’s often beautiful and moving, emotionally it never quite sticks. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 30, 2016
The Light Between Oceans winds up taking one too many self-serious twists and turns. The film earns its darkness, but it might have been even more affecting if it didn’t shrink from the light. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesJimmy GeurtsSep 1, 2016
Director Derek Cianfrance attempts to bring the emotional rawness of his previous films and influences to the melodrama genre with The Light Between Oceans, but he never quite pulls off the feat. Read full review
58
The Film StageJordan RaupAug 31, 2016
As a morality play that will surely leave the audience contemplating what they might have done in the situation, The Light Between Oceans mostly works. As a layered drama with indelible characters and an intricate narrative, it falls short, giving credence to the more contrived climactic moments while losing specificity. Read full review
58
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezAug 30, 2016
A lovely, but uneven moral tale of love, forgiveness and heartrending misdeeds, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans is conceptually sound, and at times, beautifully gut-wrenching. But the plaintive picture often becomes engrossed in conveying at all times just how precious life and love is. Read full review
55
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeAug 30, 2016
It’s a grand, old-school saga full of sacrifice and betrayal and loss, and just when the audience is gearing up for a powerfully tragic resolution of the kind that Thomas Hardy might have written, the movie veers off into Nicholas Sparks territory instead. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 2, 2016
Here, the material is already melodramatic — the characters are at the mercy of seismic forces — and Cianfrance’s direction comes off as wildly overwrought. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaSep 2, 2016
Just about the only cast member who doesn't go misty at one point or another is the horse that Down Under cinema charmer Bryan Brown takes for a trot late in the film. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldSep 1, 2016
The first-rate cast — right down to that infant, who displays Streep-like instincts for the camera — toils mightily. But sadly, they’re trapped in what becomes a sort of A-list Nicholas Sparks melodrama Down Under. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 1, 2016
Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 31, 2016
The moral dilemma at the crux of the story is what makes it interesting, and good choices were made in the casting of Fassbender and Vikander, he so deft at playing men suffering silently from inner turmoil and she so emotively open-faced. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonAug 30, 2016
Poignant and frustrating in equal measure, The Light Between Oceans aspires to be an elegant melodrama, but the intelligence that director Derek Cianfrance and his capable cast bring to bear eventually becomes overwhelmed by the story’s emotional manipulations. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJon FroschAug 30, 2016
The film, poised awkwardly between costume-drama prestige and all-out schmaltz, is so busy sweeping us up in a swirl of music, scenery and beautiful, suffering faces that it forgets to do the actual work of earning our emotions. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 30, 2016
A gorgeous but plodding and borderline ludicrous period-piece weeper. Read full review
48
The VergeTasha RobinsonAug 31, 2016
Cianfrance pushes too hard for his audience's emotional response, with little nuance and strange selectivity. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 1, 2016
Adapted by Cianfrance himself, The Light Between Oceans feels overly tied to its previous form. Read full review
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