There Will Be Blood
Paramount Vantage | Release Date: December 26, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
93
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
39
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
This is a dark, uncompromising film, thrillingly original and distinctive, with a visionary passion. It is a movie against which all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Read full review
100
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece; Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as a ruthless oilman is without flaw. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave Calhoun
That Anderson, the film’s writer-director, whose Boogie Nights was a riot but Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love both noble failures, has come to make this intelligent and enthralling masterpiece is both a little surprising and intensely satisfying. Read full review
100
NewsweekDavid Ansen
There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic. Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
There Will Be Blood is, in fact, not a historical saga; rather, it's an absurdist, blackly comic horror film with a very idiosyncratic satanic figure at its core. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore
Daniel Day-Lewis stuns in Paul Thomas Anderson's saga of a soul-dead oil man. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid Denby
An enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic. Read full review
100
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Boldly and magnificently strange, There Will Be Blood marks a significant departure in the work of Paul Thomas Anderson. Read full review
100
SlateDana Stevens
For a story that's all about the harnessing of fateful chthonic forces, Paul Thomas Anderson has dug deeper than ever before, and struck black gold. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
For bleakness, the movie can't be beat -- nor for brilliance. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has taken a stab at making The Great American Movie -- and I daresay he’s made one of them. Read full review
100
Film ThreatZack Haddad
This may be an extremely bold statement to make, but there hasn’t been such an amazing character study in film since “Citizen Kane.” I honestly can’t praise it enough. From the opening to the ghastly ending, this film will sit in the depths of your stomach for some time to come. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal is not just the performance of the year -- there will be injustice if he doesn't win an Oscar -- but a creation of awesome proportions. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Anderson's uncompromising masterpiece will continue to resonate as a harrowing cautionary warning to a country with oil pumping through its veins, clouding its judgment and coarsening its soul. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Schickel
One of the most wholly original American movies ever made. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
A searing, apocalyptic and finally breathtaking drama. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
There Will Be Blood" is anti-state of the art. It's the work of an analog filmmaker railing against an increasingly digitized world. In that sense, the movie is idiosyncratic, too: vintage visionary stuff. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Anderson’s fearless, bighearted filmmaking is an antidote to the toxic cloud of Manifest Destiny. He has made a mad American classic. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly. Read full review
100
EmpireHelen O'Hara
Uncompromising, intelligent and searing cinema. Along with The Assassination Of Jesse James... and No Country For Old Men, this is the best batch of Western-set dramas in decades. John Huston would have been proud. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's first-rank filmmaking, through and through, even if it struggles to find closure. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A searingly intense and artful tale that grabs hold of the viewer from its jarring and wordless opening scenes and doesn't let go. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The kind of film that is easily called great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by "No Country for Old Men," and that is a great film, and a perfect one. But There Will Be Blood"is not perfect, and in its imperfections we may see its reach exceeding its grasp. Which is not a dishonorable thing. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
That's not to say that There Will Be Blood isn't something exceptional; it's just that the movie is jarringly erratic, ranging from moments of delicacy to majesty to over-the-top bombast. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Just a few barrels short of being a masterpiece. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Unfortunately, the film's final third is poorly focused and, while there is a clear conclusion, it feels strangely hollow. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
It's mostly a disturbingly believable portrait of a psychopath whose true depths of rage are buried where none but he can see. The ironically named Plainview does not come into plain view until the last scene, and the lupine, scowling Day-Lewis is mesmerizing in the role. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer Anderson's more scattershot "Magnolia." Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition. Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film. Read full review
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