The Nowhere Inn
IFC Films | Release Date: September 17, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
7
Negative:
1
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 1, 2020
At times a bit too enamored of these loose conceits, The Nowhere Inn sometimes registers as a cheap fuck-with-the-audience provocation that might have been better suited for a viral short (or several), but at its finest moments the movie conjures a singular vision steeped in zaniness, but not devoid of purpose. Read full review
80
Little White LiesEmily MaskellNov 2, 2021
The Nowhere Inn is fan service in the most St Vincent of ways: solidifying her mysterious image as a queer women’s deity, baring everything and revealing nothing at all. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfSep 16, 2021
While St. Vincent’s The Nowhere Inn is not the standard performative music documentary, it opens a window to her soul that many are never able to give away so freely in front of the camera. Read full review
75
The Film StageJohn FinkSep 17, 2021
Director Bill Benz (best known for episodes of Portlandia), Clark, and Brownstein have a good deal of fun playing the business side of show business—the documentary filmmaker trying to find a unique angle between concert footage, or the star having to take mundane questions from the press in each city she visits on tour. It both documents an identify crisis and doesn’t. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshSep 17, 2021
Layered storytelling that tests the limits of the screen and the fourth wall allows for Clark and Brownstein to play at playing themselves, making for a sharp, comedic commentary on the way fame complicates identity. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinFeb 1, 2020
The Nowhere Inn is simultaneously satire and fan service, frothy fun and pretentious nonsense, depending on what the viewer wants it to be. Read full review
70
Film ThreatLorry KiktaFeb 1, 2020
The Nowhere Inn deeply explores the dynamic between performer and audience and performer with self. It does so in a way I’ve never seen before. It has so many layers that at some point, you get lost in the thick of it, but in a good way. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubAlex McLevySep 15, 2021
Never consistently funny enough to work as straight comedy and too broad to succeed in its somber aspirations, the results are still engaging in their attempts to defy easy categorization. Like St. Vincent herself, The Nowhere Inn keeps morphing into something else. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 1, 2020
Outside its value as a cautionary tale about introducing a power dynamic into a friendship between former equals, there’s an emptiness at the heart of The Nowhere Inn which might be part of the point (ah, the vacuity of celebrity! the hollowness of fame!) but the observation of emptiness is not the same as actual substance. Read full review
65
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaFeb 1, 2020
The film, directed by Portlandia helmer Bill Benz, is too much of a hodge-podge for its own good. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comCarlos AguilarSep 17, 2021
Plenty watchable and inspired from a visual standpoint, The Nowhere Inn is a less refined and less provocative relative of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, Brady Corbet's Vox Lux, or Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 13, 2021
Nowhere Inn never quite crawls out from under the David Byrne influence as a movie or a film conceit. It’s more droll than funny, and only novel in the sense that she’s mocking the conventions of such movies and they’re beyond mockery at this point. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 13, 2021
As you’d imagine, the entire shebang is so naggingly self-referential, and so noisy with in-jokes, that it should, by rights, disappear up its own trombone. But there’s a saving grace: this is a funny movie. Read full review
60
VarietyAmy NicholsonFeb 1, 2020
As a ballad about a rock star’s soul, The Nowhere Inn is a fun riff performed on flimsy strings. Read full review
50
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergSep 16, 2021
Formally lively, The Nowhere Inn is a true meta exercise in the sense that the more derivative and self-conscious its conceptual gambits seem (stick around: The reflexivity continues after the end credits), the more it proves its ostensible point. Read full review
50
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerSep 15, 2021
Early on, the self-deprecating stuff takes on a studied air, and in the final stretch, the filmmakers seem to think they can shock-cut and rug-pull their way into something resembling psychological horror. The weirdness isn’t really weird enough to pull this off; it’s all the self-indulgence without much oddball pleasure. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDerek SmithSep 13, 2021
The film is elevated by funny, cleverly staged sequences, but it too often hammers the notion that fame destroys authenticity. Read full review
50
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonFeb 1, 2020
Try as it might to blend the music-conscious idiosyncrasies of Portlandia with the varied persona of one of our weirdest, most valued artists, The Nowhere Inn ends up going, well, nowhere. Read full review
40
The GuardianPhuong LeOct 26, 2021
Too hip for its own good, the film ends up going nowhere. Only of interest, perhaps, to hardcore St Vincent and Brownstein fans. Read full review
20
TheWrapSimon AbramsFeb 1, 2020
The Nowhere Inn . . . is a collection of comedic and musical sketches that are not funny, weird or thoughtful enough to sell its creators’ insistent, but mostly trite and undeveloped, ideas about the performative nature of self-fashioning and creative authenticity. Read full review
More From This Movie

60 Critic Reviews

6.9 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL