Under the Skin
A24 | Release Date: April 4, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 49 Critic Reviews
Positive:
40
Mixed:
6
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Radio TimesAndrew CollinsNov 5, 2025
Under the Skin delivers startlingly original imagery amid the Scottish landscapes and finds queasy horror everywhere thanks to Mica Levi's pervasive electronic score. It's an experience you'll not forget in a hurry. Read full review
100
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMar 7, 2024
This is a movie that at its most sensitive is about loneliness, and at its bleakest and most searching is a look at the mechanics of sexual predation. Read full review
100
CineVueDaniel GreenSep 26, 2023
Glazer’s Under the Skin is his otherworldly opus. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 26, 2023
With this near-perfect midnight movie, [Glazer] has given us a work of unsettling and riveting brilliance. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 20, 2023
It sure as hell got under mine. Jonathan Glazer's sci-fi horror is loosely adapted, or atmospherically distilled, by Walter Campbell from the 2000 novel by Michel Faber. The result is visually stunning and deeply disturbing: very freaky, very scary, and very erotic. It also comes with a dog whistle of absurdist humour that I suspect has been inaudible for some American reviewers on the international festival circuit so far. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 1, 2020
A truly extraordinary trick has been pulled off: Under the Skin manages to foster empathy with an entity as isolated from human experience as an avalanche or a weather system. Such achievements tend to allow films to be classed as masterpieces. That word may not be too weighty for Glazer’s towering curio. Read full review
100
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 15, 2014
Glazer is nothing if not ambitious; the rough edge of naturalism, on the streets, slices into the more controlled and stylized look of science fiction, and the result seems both to drift and to gather to a point of almost painful intensity. Read full review
100
SlateDan KoisApr 12, 2014
Actors aren’t Navy SEALs, I know, but Johansson was, in fact, brave to take on this role: brave in that it’s a sharp left turn from what audiences expect or even like; brave in that she embraced an artistically bold method of building a movie when most other movie stars would have said no thanks to the idea of chatting up random Scotsmen in a van. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 10, 2014
Weird. Brilliant. Stunning. Under the Skin is by far the most memorable movie of the first few months of 2014. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 4, 2014
This stark and intensely controlled film is the work of a powerful visual stylist and storyteller, one who looks like he belongs on the short list of directors who have carried the narrative methods of the silent era deep into modern cinema. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzApr 4, 2014
A brilliant science fiction movie — more of an "experience" than a traditional story, with plenty to say about gender roles, sexism and the power of lust? Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyApr 3, 2014
Watching this film feels like a genesis moment — of sci-fi fable, of filmmaking, of performance — with all the ambiguity and excitement that implies. Read full review
100
The New York TimesStephen HoldenApr 3, 2014
The movie’s eerie, climactic image challenges our conventional notions of human identity and leaves us reflecting on the possibility that every being in the universe is an alien in disguise. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 3, 2014
Much of this is fascinating, as far as it goes, but it wouldn't go as far as it does into drama were it not for Ms. Johansson's wonderfully strange performance. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekApr 1, 2014
Very little in Under the Skin is clear at all. Its secrets unspool in mysterious, supple ribbons, but that's part of its allure, and its great beauty. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezMar 28, 2014
Throughout, what truly matters to director Jonathan Glazer is articulating through visual and aural enticement the unconscious power of our death drive. Read full review
100
Total FilmAndrew LowryMar 10, 2014
You may not be sure what you've seen, but you've sure seen something. With neither a petticoat nor a wideboy in sight, this is one of the most original and exciting British movies in some time. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 17, 2013
It’s an intoxicating marvel, strange and sublime: it combines sci-fi ideas, gloriously unusual special effects and a sharp atmosphere of horror. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 17, 2013
Glazer’s astonishing film takes you to a place where the everyday becomes suddenly strange, and fear and seduction become one and the same. Read full review
100
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 17, 2013
Under the Skin is perhaps best viewed as an icy parable of love, sex and loneliness. Read full review
91
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 17, 2014
There's something fairly malignant in the way Glazer's strange movie holds attention, against the urge to give up and leave. There is no doubting its boundless artistry or pretension, a dangerous position for any movie in today's love-me pop culture to place itself in. Under the Skin is exactly where it gets. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 2, 2014
Under The Skin is rich with menacing atmosphere, so much so that viewers could probably tune out the narrative and still get on the proper wavelength. Read full review
90
The DissolveNoel MurrayApr 3, 2014
The extraordinary achievement of Under The Skin is that while Laura develops some human qualities, Glazer resists the temptation to turn this alien’s story into the story of what it means to be human. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineScott WoldApr 3, 2018
For those with the patience, and for those who simply love the way a fascinatingly unique film can so fully convey and shape a point of view, Under the Skin will reward the time spent in the theater. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 16, 2014
What makes Under the Skin such a mind-blower has everything to do with Johansson’s chillingly unempathetic turn as the, well, whatever she is, coupled with cinematographer Daniel Landin’s disorienting, hallucinogenic visuals. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 18, 2014
A deeply creepy and mysterious noir. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 12, 2014
It feels fresh and unpredictable, as quietly strange as the remarkable musical score from first-time feature film composer Mica Levi. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 10, 2014
With long, quiet takes in which he simply observes Johansson wordlessly taking in the world around her, Glazer infuses the everyday modern world with a surpassing sense of strangeness and doom. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 10, 2014
What’s under the film’s surface is intriguing enough, but it’s the surface itself that holds you in a dark trance. A portrait of alienation filmed from the alien’s point of view — or is it just a woman’s? — the movie’s a cinematic Rubik’s Cube that snaps together surprisingly easily, yet whose larger meanings remain tantalizingly out of reach. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 3, 2014
A brave experiment in cinema that richly rewards the demands it makes. The result is an amazement, a film of beauty and shocking gravity. Read full review
83
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanApr 17, 2014
Virtually all science fiction functions as metaphor, and I took this film to be a metaphor for the act of becoming fully human. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnSep 17, 2013
A totally wacky head-trip with midnight movie sensibilities and a daring avant garde spirit, Glazer's movie is ultimately too aimlessly weird to make its trippy narrative fully satisfying, but owes much to Johansson's intense commitment to a strangely erotic and unnerving performance unlike anything she has done before. Read full review
83
The PlaylistChris WillmanSep 17, 2013
Johannson turns out to be perfectly cast, being able to shift from blank alien mode to kittenish seduction without ever letting you see the switch being turned on or off. Read full review
83
Film.comWilliam GossSep 17, 2013
Under the Skin is a deliberately oblique piece of work that prizes rhythms and textures above hows and whys. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 18, 2014
Under the Skin is, in short, a film that does just that: gets under one's skin, shining a light on what it means to be human -- even if what we end up seeing is something less than comforting. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 17, 2014
Yes, Glazer asks a lot of his audience. At times the movie feels like something you've walked in to the middle of, so you're thrown off balance. Yet it's hypnotic — you want to stick around to see what happens, and maybe just to figure out what the hell is going on. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreApr 8, 2014
Under the Skin isn’t conventional, thrilling or particularly satisfying in a sci-fi aliens-are-hunting-us sense. But it manages something far more sinister and fascinating. It gets under your skin and imprints on your memory. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 7, 2014
It's as existential as a sci-fi/horror film can possibly be. It requires that the viewer slip into a meditative mood and remain there for more than 90 minutes. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinApr 4, 2014
At times the film is right on the border between mesmerizing and narcotizing, but it casts an otherworldly spell. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMay 9, 2014
All this is initially fascinating, and then progressively less so. The problem is the usual serial-killer issue – things, no matter how weird and kinky, get repetitive. Read full review
60
EmpireNev PierceMar 10, 2014
Odd and sexy, troubling and touching, frustrating and mesmerising, dull and haunting. A film by Jonathan Glazer. Read full review
60
VarietyScott FoundasSep 17, 2013
Glazer has always been longer on atmosphere and uncanny moods than on narrative, but the fatal flaw of Under the Skin isn’t that not much happens; it’s that what does happen isn’t all that interesting. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 17, 2013
More pictorially arresting than intellectually coherent. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyApr 2, 2014
As a film, Under the Skin is hauntingly freaky and ultimately frustrating. But as a movie star's gamble to be seen as more than just a moneymaking member of the Marvel universe, it's a home run. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 10, 2014
Under the Skin can be confused for a movie that hides its meanings, when it's really a movie that hides its meaninglessness. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierApr 3, 2014
There’s atmosphere here, but nothing else. Read full review
30
TimeRichard CorlissApr 3, 2014
Under the Skin falls in love with its bleak monotony. It is a melodrama with all the thrills surgically excised. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickApr 2, 2014
Tedious and pretentious. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedApr 2, 2014
I certainly wish Ms. Johansson hadn’t shown up at all. She’s never less than interesting to watch, but Under the Skin is a big waste of her time. Read full review
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