The Little Stranger
20th Century Fox | Release Date: August 31, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Washington PostAlan ZilbermanAug 30, 2018
As a director, Abrahamson uses that sense of the detached observer as a scalpel, whittling away at our expectations of horror films until we have no choice but to look at — and really listen to — what is happening. It’s an approach that requires patience, on his part and ours, but the rewards are worth it. Read full review
85
Film Journal InternationalHarry HaunAug 30, 2018
The Little Stranger invites debate and analysis long after viewing. Heady horror films with psychological tics and twists are few and far between, and this is the best one since The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s stylishly sinister 1961 edition of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Read full review
84
Paste MagazineOktay Ege Kozak Sep 14, 2018
Abrahamson can transition seamlessly between static James Ivory-type long shots of the soothing English countryside, easing the audience into a sense of comfort that comes with the high-class beauty of the period drama, and uncomfortable close-ups of faces, weaning in and out of focus, daring us to confront the neuroses of the characters head on. Underneath the veneer of uber-polite socializing is a vast inner turmoil. Read full review
83
The PlaylistKimber MyersAug 31, 2018
This is a subtle, slow burn of a film that refuses to bow to audience expectations in either its small moments or its overall arc. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Aug 30, 2018
In truth, The Little Stranger is barely a horror movie at all. It’s more of an impeccably crafted chamber drama with a supernatural bent, like Edith Wharton by way of Shirley Jackson. Read full review
80
IGNBrian GallagherAug 31, 2018
The Little Stranger may be a bit too slow burn at times and isn't for all tastes, but it's well-acted and engrossing. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 30, 2018
A slow-building shiver of a movie, The Little Stranger tells a familiar but pleasurably engrossing story. Read full review
80
The AtlanticDavid SimsAug 30, 2018
The entire film has the sense of something being profoundly, and mercifully, upended; the result is engrossing, satisfying, and more than a little heartbreaking. Read full review
80
VarietyGuy LodgeAug 30, 2018
Wilson’s extraordinary performance rules the film, weaving a lifetime of accumulating disappointment into a single arched eyebrow. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 30, 2018
Gleeson is terrific as Faraday struggles — with his feelings for Caroline, with her feelings for him, with the notion that some of what’s going on at Hundreds Hall may not have a rational explanation. The evolution of his character is subtle, but hauntingly effective. Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonAug 30, 2018
It’s a slow-burn horror film, one that has all the sudden scares and moments of pristine fear present in any good movie of its ilk. But in the hands of Lenny Abrahamson (Room), The Little Stranger is elevated by measured pacing that also makes the larger house-based metaphor clear — and the result is both elegiac and frightening. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 30, 2018
The Little Stranger is fluently made and really well acted, particularly by Ruth Wilson, though maybe a bit too constrained by period-movie prestige to be properly scary. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisAug 31, 2018
Don’t expect any hokey scare tactics here. Under the steady hand of Oscar-nominated director Abrahamson (Room), the film is a calculated slow burn, one that plays a cunning head game with those viewers willing to be entranced. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 31, 2018
At times The Little Stranger is frustratingly vague, and some of the developments don’t add up … Until they do. Quite nicely and quite eerily. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comTomris LafflyAug 31, 2018
Elegant, cold-to-the-touch blend of drama and gothic horror. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAug 30, 2018
Gleeson and Wilson deliver tightly-wound performances, while the ending is more chilling, and perhaps perplexing, than audiences might expect. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyAug 30, 2018
Wilson gives a performance that in its own way is as striking as Gleeson’s. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldAug 30, 2018
The Little Stranger is a haunted-house movie, but not one with cheap scares. In fact there are few scares at all — it’s mostly just an atmosphere of lingering, musty dread — and horror-movie fans should be warned that it’s all quite subtle. But it’s haunting, in its quiet way. Read full review
70
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 31, 2018
Kudos to Wilson (how has she not won an Emmy for her brilliant work on The Affair?), who builds what seems at first like a peripheral character into the defiant soul of the movie. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 30, 2018
The twisting and cracking of the British class system is always fascinating to observe, and The Little Stranger traces the details of its chosen moment of social change with precision and subtlety, and with its own layers of somewhat dubious nostalgia. Read full review
70
Village VoiceBilge EbiriAug 30, 2018
Like many gothic tales, The Little Stranger hangs tantalizingly between genres: It has elements of haunted house thriller, of doomed romance, of psychological thriller, of historical allegory. Read full review
67
Original-CinJim SlotekSep 3, 2018
A kind of gothic, ghostly mash-up of Downton Abbey and Grey Gardens, The Little Stranger is as mannered, tattered and morose as that marriage of premises suggests. Read full review
67
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerAug 30, 2018
The Little Stranger slowly mutates into a harrowing treatise on the ways in which absolute privilege can corrupt absolutely. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 30, 2018
The Little Stranger is a quiet, stately Gothic ghost story, an exquisitely observed British period piece built upon understated, reserved and stoic performances by Domhnall Gleeson and the formidable Ruth Wilson. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrAug 30, 2018
All in all, it’s just a little underdeveloped. Perhaps in novel form its polite pace and subtle revelations made a certain amount of sense, but the movie is lacking. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeOct 2, 2018
There are pacing issues in a brooding, cautious middle section, but nothing terminal. There is also the problem that this elusive supernatural mystery has been mismarketed as a horror – unfortunate, certainly, but not the fault of the film. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraSep 24, 2018
This lacks the sting in the tail of something like the similarly post-War The Others, but it offers a soupy atmosphere of low-level dread and paints a devastating portrait of a vanishing age. Read full review
60
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganAug 30, 2018
While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout. Read full review
50
Film ThreatFilipe FreitasJan 11, 2019
More inanimate than haunting, The Little Stranger is Abrahamson’s least interesting feature. Read full review
50
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 6, 2018
The upper-crust British characters in The Little Stranger, the new horror film from “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson, are so rigid they make the Crawleys of “Downton Abbey” look like the Osbournes. The effect is occasionally spooky, but more often snoozy. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonSep 2, 2018
Waters' novel was content to let the evil within Hundreds Hall remain shapeless and nameless. Director Lenny Abrahamson's (Room) movie wants to give it definite shape, and even a name, though the movie is not better for it. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleCarla MeyerAug 31, 2018
The Little Stranger will satisfy a very specific audience: “Downton Abbey” watchers who thought that show would be perfect if only the manor were down at the heels and haunted. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineRichard Scott LarsonAug 30, 2018
Perhaps the film's failure to surprise in the end is a result of leaning too heavily on a toolbox not yet translated into the language of cinematic form. Read full review
42
IndieWireEric KohnAug 30, 2018
Abrahamson seems so coy about the haunting of the Ayres’ house that he refuses to allow the movie’s strongest aspect to take center stage, and the perils of The Little Stranger hover aimlessly throughout the movie like a specter in search of some elusive white light. Read full review
42
The Film StageJose SolísAug 30, 2018
It fails as an insightful look at the class system in England because it sees every party with utmost contempt. Read full review
40
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiAug 31, 2018
The Little Stranger has all the disquieting atmosphere of a total void, and like a total void, not a lot happens in it. You might get sucked into the cold, but you’ll grow bored quickly. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichAug 30, 2018
Gleeson plays the role with the kind of full-bore commitment (every supercilious gesture precise and intelligently thought through) that makes you wish the movie better complemented his efforts. Read full review
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