Visitors
Cinedigm | Release Date: January 24, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
7
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 27, 2014
For those willing to join Reggio in his extended meditation, Visitors offers a sublime, even spiritual experience, as well as a bracing reminder of cinema’s power to create a transformative occasion. Read full review
90
The New York TimesStephen HoldenJan 23, 2014
Time slows to a near-standstill as the film peers into humanity’s troubled soul, glimpsed through the individual faces, which sometimes appear to be studying us as intently as we are studying them. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTrevor JohnstonApr 1, 2014
There’s much to ponder in a brave, defiantly idiosyncratic film that’s as mesmerising as it is unexpected. Read full review
80
The DissolveNoel MurrayJan 23, 2014
The film is a poetic and lulling mediation on humanity as some kind of ancient alien race, which Reggio means to isolate and examine, as though he’s never encountered them before. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovFeb 12, 2014
What Reggio’s ultimate point or conclusion might be is, as ever, left up to the viewer for interpretation. And while this is patently not a film that big-box cineplexers are going to rush to in droves, Visitors remains a wondrous work of artistic achievement. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSteven BooneJan 24, 2014
It's Glass who gives Visitors something like a structure, alternating between long, contemplative stretches and moments of ecstatic grandeur, like the crowd of sports fans who erupt in (extreme slow-motion) joy at some victory. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 24, 2014
I’ve never been able to figure out if Reggio is an artist or a con artist. Perhaps, in some ways, he’s both. He has claimed in interviews that he intended to make a movie about “the wonders of the universe.” Whatever he’s made, for better or worse, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineBill WeberJan 19, 2014
Godfrey Reggio's symphony of pristine 4K images doesn't add up to one grand epiphany, but an intermittent cluster of small ones. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 24, 2014
All joking aside, this is a director who is incapable of creating something that’s not beautiful. He can, however, on occasion indulge in a little too much cliché. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMar 13, 2014
Visitors is lovely, soothing, like the cinematic equivalent of tasteful elevator music, but it doesn’t convey as much truth as a single glimpse into Triska’s eyes. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesBill StametsMar 9, 2014
Non-narrative films can be opaque in deep ways. Visitors slips into pseudo-profundity. That said, I’d see it again. Read full review
60
EmpireSimon CrookMar 31, 2014
Strange and surreal but with moments of real beauty. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 21, 2014
Unfortunately, the draggy movie is one thing definitively, and that’s exactly like all of Reggio’s other films. His formal devices haven’t changed in 30 years, and the po-faced presentation, once hypnotically strange and cosmic, now feels like an overused gimmick. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoMar 6, 2014
You may experience Visitors as more of a sedative than a punch in the guts. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghFeb 27, 2014
It's more thought experiment than film, and although it's laudable for its daring to be unlike any film you’re likely to have ever seen, it ultimately doesn't have more meaning to import than a well-photographed daily affirmations calendar. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranFeb 13, 2014
In practice this mélange of imagery is aimed more at the inside of Reggio's head than anywhere else. Unless you are able to get on his quasi-experimental wavelength, a dicey proposition at best, Visitors will miss your solar plexus entirely and instead put you right to sleep. With one exception. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Adam NaymanJan 31, 2014
As it glides along from one pretty picture to the next, Visitors starts to feel less like a singular artistic gesture than a compendium of quasi-experimental film clichés. Read full review
40
Total FilmSimon KinnearJan 18, 2015
Undeniably beautiful, oddly moving... and quickly tiresome. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubBen KenigsbergJan 22, 2014
What’s hypnotic for five minutes at the Whitney Museum does not necessarily carry over to an 80-minute movie, and Visitors might conceivably run half that length without the slow motion. Reggio’s film premiered in Toronto with live musical accompaniment, a gimmick that probably enhanced the experiential aspect of what’s otherwise a glorified installation piece. Read full review
20
Village VoiceCalum MarshJan 21, 2014
Koyaanisqatsi was a marvel of smeared and kaleidoscopic light; Visitors is a dull etch of digital blacks and grays. Read full review
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