Zeros and Ones
Lionsgate | Release Date: November 19, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
5
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayNov 19, 2021
This is a movie at which some will shrug and some will love. It’s a spiritually probing, deeply personal, stubbornly idiosyncratic work of art. It’s an Abel Ferrara film. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyNov 22, 2021
Ferrara’s filmmaking always has a blunt elemental force and conviction. It doesn’t quite transcend the commonplace aspect of what he’s trying to “say.” And yet transcending isn’t the point—doing is. This is not just guerrilla filmmaking, it’s a kind of action painting. A literal journey to the end of the night. Read full review
75
The Film StageEthan VestbyAug 14, 2021
At barely feature-length it’s somewhat a wisp of a film, but to good ends, as if the crazed artist at its helm isn’t even totally stopping to think, and like one of his greatest works, New Rose Hotel, channeling the fury of his early art into a different form of aggression. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJessica KiangAug 14, 2021
The intellectual take on the pandemic here is oblique. Still, the mood feels extraordinarily direct, like speaking on a telephone to a version of yourself from maybe half a year ago in lockdown number two or three, before there were vaccines and hope, when the winter nights were long and dawn seemed very far away. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganNov 18, 2021
Bolstered by a sharply competent central performance as well as darkly intoxicating shots of an ancient city, Zeros and Ones is an act of artistic abstraction that is mostly rewarding in its ambiguity. Read full review
70
TheWrapCarlos AguilarNov 18, 2021
Indecipherable to a fault but in the end surprisingly hopeful, Zeros and Ones feels like diving into a murky river to search for a missing object, fully aware one might never find it but still willing to get wet in its slush for the sake of trying. Read full review
70
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisNov 18, 2021
Utterly baffling, yet never less than intriguing, Zeros and Ones lingers in the mind. Even after you think you’ve brushed it off, its chilly tendrils continue to cling. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyNov 17, 2021
What Zeros And Ones conveys, in its shoestring terms, is the actual mood of a world of uncertainties. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 19, 2021
Zeros and Ones isn’t much of an entertaining sit — watching it feels like dusting off a cryptic artifact from a bygone civilization, its pleasures more archaeological than anything else — but every frame of this weird soup is suffused with the restless creative spirit of someone who’s been waiting for a new world order, and recognizes that we only get so many chances to make it happen. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 2, 2022
This film may stretch your patience to the limit and beyond. It’s minor work – but there is always something there, some restless wounded intelligence, a pugnacious worrying-away at something. Read full review
60
IGNMatt FowlerNov 22, 2021
Zeros and Ones uses the spy genre as a thin mask for a fever dream that evokes nightmarish uncertainty. Read full review
60
VarietyJay WeissbergAug 18, 2021
What Zeros and Ones does do — deliberately, calculatedly, in the kind of messy intuitive manner that’s been the director’s signature of late — is reproduce the general state of unease and insecurity that’s plagued most of us during lockdown. Read full review
42
Original-CinThom ErnstJan 18, 2022
The film is blessedly short, which does allow for its quirky pace and oddball plotting to play out without exhausting the viewer’s curiosity, even if it is just a series of head-scratching WTF? scenes leading to nowhere. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonAug 18, 2021
The scrambled narrative, listless pace, clumsy stabs at profundity and severe lack of humor will limit the film’s appeal to existing converts and cult movie connoisseurs. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 3, 2021
The obscurant strain of it all shows. Most of what’s here would be filler in a better film, or bullet point scenes in a story more wholly-shaped and worked out. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChuck BowenNov 17, 2021
Zeros and Ones is the unwelcome spectacle of a bad boy attempting to apologize for his badness. Read full review
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