Voyagers
Lionsgate | Release Date: April 9, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
23
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
72
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeApr 7, 2021
Voyagers is a smart and effective little sci-fi thriller about the best-laid plans of scientists crumbling in the face of teenage hormones and human frailty. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 7, 2021
Maybe the film’s escalating conflict would be more exciting if the characters themselves (played by the likes of Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp, among an ensemble of fellow twentysomething model types) weren’t such blank-eyed nothings. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireApr 9, 2021
But despite the familiar nature of the themes writer/director Neil Burger is exploring, his film still offers plenty of tension and his trademark visual panache. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireApr 9, 2021
Despite the familiar nature of the themes writer/director Neil Burger is exploring, his film still offers plenty of tension and his trademark visual panache. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 7, 2021
Voyagers shows that Burger can still move a story along with craft, pace, and skill, even if that story is, in the end, awfully predictable. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 7, 2021
For at least half a movie, it’s a wildly entertaining concept with some pretty good payoffs and there was a chance we’d have the best B-movie in recent memory, but then the story takes the easy way out and we’re left wondering why they didn’t ride the original idea all the way to the finish line. Read full review
60
PolygonRoxana HadadiApr 9, 2021
Burger has crafted a shrug of a movie that insists teenagers should follow the rules and submit to the greater good, but fails to imagine what toll that kind of sacrifice would really take. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonApr 7, 2021
This flawed thriller manages to tap into the sickening realisation that no matter where we travel in the universe, we always bring the worst parts of ourselves. Read full review
60
IGNMatt FowlerApr 7, 2021
While sci-fi is generally rife with allegories, a steadier hand was needed here in Voyagers. The messaging, though noble and necessary, feels obvious to the point that it takes you out of the film. The cast is talented and the premise is promising, but the story plays out in a predictable fashion, which also works, in a way, to undercut the meaning. Read full review
58
UproxxVince ManciniApr 15, 2021
Goofiness and occasional sub-par acting is forgivable in YA space fiction. Less acceptable is the consistent disrespect and disregard Voyagers shows toward its own characters and premise. If the eternal question is “what did you want this movie to be?” Voyagers’ consistent, unmistakable response is “sort of like other movies.” Read full review
58
The PlaylistStaff (Note Credited)Apr 10, 2021
Unfortunately, this noble effort never truly achieves the lift-off and greatness it aspires to reach. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 8, 2021
This is a pulpy B movie that is dying to be a prestige project, and there’s a big part of you that wishes everyone had just leaned into the teensploitation aspects more. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 8, 2021
This is a pulpy B movie that is dying to be a prestige project, and there’s a big part of you that wishes everyone had just leaned into the teensploitation aspects more. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiApr 8, 2021
More thought seems to have gone into the future foodstuff and eating utensil design than in the narrative. It’s a lazy film, one whose future will most likely live on in mediocre undergraduate term papers. Read full review
50
The Associated PressLindsey BahrApr 8, 2021
Voyagers is simply a semi-effective thriller with about as much emotional intelligence as its lab-produced, hormone-controlled, sequestered youngsters. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 8, 2021
The performances, actors playing stock characters, are passable if not terribly compelling. The production design is first rate. But we see every single story beat coming at us like a comet we’ve been expecting for years. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanApr 7, 2021
Voyagers is a dutiful thriller about the beast within, but there’s not a lot of surprise to it. Even when the characters let themselves go, the drama remains in lockdown. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyApr 7, 2021
The conflicts feel just a tad too routine and the characters too thinly drawn to get the blood flowing. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 7, 2021
The sci-fi thriller Voyagers is grounded in very real current fears. But otherwise, it’s a bit of an airhead. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshApr 7, 2021
Burger presupposes all the right questions (and anxieties) about the realities of climate change-induced space migration; it’s just that as a film, Voyagers feels like a role-playing game rather than a character-driven story. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittApr 7, 2021
The movie throws in a little murder mystery and an alien-invasion angle with its coming-of-age themes, features a host of up-and-coming stars (including Johnny Depp’s daughter Lily-Rose Depp), and rockets to some interesting places when it comes to science and what makes us us. What undermines all that, however, is when the film shifts into being an intergalactic Lord of the Flies as the kids turn on each other and go tribal. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichApr 7, 2021
The middling but enjoyable Voyagers is meant to be a timeless parable about the primitive essence of human nature; if its space-age shenanigans are broadly identical to the beats of a book William Golding wrote about a group of preadolescent boys who crash on a deserted island during World War II, that’s more of a feature than it is a bug. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisApr 7, 2021
The technically elegant Voyagers, about a space colonization trip run amok, is easy enough to sit through, but it’s a story in need of more rocket fuel. There isn’t a bad scene in the movie, yet there isn’t a really good scene, either. It’s a quiet psychological thriller, even when it’s trying to stir mayhem. Read full review
45
Vanity FairRichard LawsonApr 7, 2021
The film is mostly just a rehash of Lord of the Flies set in space. It turns down all the expected corridors and leaves most of its chilling implications unexplored. Read full review
42
The Film StageEli FriedbergApr 9, 2021
It’s a familiar traced sketch of 20th century imagined dystopias, but Gen-Z trappings evocative of our own looming dystopia offer a slightly new shade of color. It just isn’t vivid enough. Read full review
40
The TelegraphEd PowerNov 4, 2021
Despite its ambitious goal of transposing a dystopian classic to the modern “Young Adult” genre, Voyagers is ultimately about as effective as a leaky space-suit. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 16, 2021
Most of Burger’s film, in truth, is either numb or dumb. Read full review
40
Time OutStephen A RussellApr 13, 2021
If you’re at a loss what to do one night, it’s not the worst idea to get lost in space with this crew, but it never quite takes off. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeApr 7, 2021
It’s all just too sanitised and safe, a journey that stumbles as it takes us from the unknown to the familiar, a film that plods when it should stride. How did a bracing idea about rebellion, sexual awakening and lawlessness turn out so boring? Read full review
34
Paste MagazineJacob OllerApr 7, 2021
And as far as criticism goes, the tedious and trite, regressive and ridiculous Voyagers doesn’t need any more than it’s already going to get. Read full review
30
ABC NewsPeter TraversApr 9, 2021
Despite an intriguing premise that suggests a ‘Lord of the Flies’ in space, Neil Burger’s fun-free thriller about young hotties playing astronauts quickly devolves into is a dud that never makes sense of its borrowed convictions or any sense at all. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 8, 2021
The film’s ponderous pace, its deficit of emotional energy, its ugly colors, its repetitive chases down more corridors than anyone has seen since “Last Year at Marienbad,” and its actors’ shared penchant for mumbling and scowling make those 108 minutes seem interminable. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreApr 8, 2021
Voyagers, in keeping its focus where it does, feels like a waste not just because of how predictable its beats are, but because it ends just when it feels like it’s getting interesting. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisApr 8, 2021
This dull dig into human nature owes more to the aesthetics of Calvin Klein than the terrors of outer space. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiApr 8, 2021
Burger’s half-assed attempt at an updated Lord of the Flies makes you long for a good old-fashioned school bus and a pig’s head on a stick. Read full review
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