Wildcat
Oscilloscope Laboratories | Release Date: May 3, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMay 3, 2024
It’s a soulful, pointed and unconventional grappling with the mysteries of the deeply Catholic, norm-shattering Georgia native’s life and work. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 15, 2024
Wildcat is an inventive and haunting mood piece with a number of memorable scenes. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 30, 2024
For neophytes, there’s still much to enjoy – cinematographer Steve Cosen’s painterly framing, exuberant scenery chewing (Linney makes a meal out of one vignette’s rotted teeth) – but the thematic resonance between story and storyteller gets a little lost when you’re only working off the reenactments’ CliffsNotes. Read full review
67
The PlaylistAnkit JhunjhunwalaSep 17, 2023
Wildcat should provide interest to audiences that have read and enjoyed O’Connor’s work and might even spur new readers to seek her stories out. Read full review
63
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMay 19, 2024
Maya Hawke, the director’s daughter with Uma Thurman, plays O’Connor. Her performance is one of the movie’s strengths. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireMay 3, 2024
Ethan Hawke attempts to breathe new life into the biopic structure with mixed results in “Wildcat.” What is certain is that he’s drawn a rich and multilayered performance from his daughter, Maya Hawke, in the starring role. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChris BarsantiApr 28, 2024
By shooting the fiction sequences with the same dreamy fish-eye unreality as the scenes showing O’Connor’s real life, the film blurs the line between the two until it’s almost nonexistent. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt MaytumSep 13, 2023
Ultimately, though, the combination of handsome visuals and assemblage of sketchy moments leave it feeling more like a museum piece, offering impressions over a gratifying narrative experience. Read full review
58
IndieWireSiddhant AdlakhaSep 14, 2023
Wildcat is too tame in its portrayal of suffering to let its Catholic undertones sing or take powerful cinematic form, resulting in a work where paradoxes are half-baked dilemmas that seem too conveniently solved, and life itself is something that happens far off-screen. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 3, 2023
It’s emotionally exhausting, but audiences come away with a sense of her legacy, as well as an appreciation for the adversity she faced (and, to a lesser degree, a sense of the criticism that has been leveled against her). Read full review
50
ColliderNate RichardSep 14, 2023
For as much care and passion that the Hawkes put into Wildcat, the film never knows what it wants to be or even what audience it wants to be speaking to. Read full review
40
The New York TimesBrandon YuMay 2, 2024
Half-sketched and sometimes hard to follow, the stories glimpsed here ultimately fail to produce a fully legible or consistently engaging arc of what must be a roiling inner world. Read full review
40
The GuardianCharles BramescoSep 13, 2023
Ethan Hawke has good taste, and his past undertakings as director have affirmed that, but the biopic’s big built-in pitfall – the psychologically facile connect-the-dots between a figure’s life and works – swallows up his perceptible esteem for O’Connor. Read full review
35
Paste MagazineKatarina DocalovichSep 27, 2023
Regrettably, a gross number of missteps overshadow the Hawkes’ good intentions with this film. Even without Maya Hawke’s frumpy hag drag as O’Connor, complete with too-large dentures and an unfortunate wig, the lack of creative risk taken by the filmmakers, as well as the lack of research done by the team, sinks Wildcat before it gets started. Read full review
16
The Film StageEthan VestbySep 15, 2023
One hopes Wildcat can disappear into thin air so that it doesn’t have to weigh on Hawke’s legacy. Read full review
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