Watch Now
Where To Watch
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Fraught with hints of conspiracy both secular and spiritual (Who messed with the plane? God or the CIA? And whatever the answer, what was the motive?), Manifest bounces around like a pinball machine with bumpers marked "sinister," "heartbreak," and "redemption," and scores high whichever one it touches.
-
Manifest wants to be "This Is Us" with a taste of "Lost." Over the first episode, it manages the feat with considerable skill. A good cast sells the improbable hook by at least making it emotionally probable.
-
Its inquisitiveness and willingness to be bold and fairly uncynical given all the things it’s trying to be is more than welcome.
-
There are a number of really interesting ideas to be uncovered in Manifest.
-
Episode One is well-made and poses many more questions than answers. But you know the drill.
-
The bumpy flight scene is indeed terrifying (firsthand advice: don’t watch on a plane). But once on the ground, rote themes of redemption and faith dilute an otherwise intriguing supernatural occurrence. ... [Recurring themes] point toward a potentially addictive series if “Manifest” allows its gripping supernatural narrative to rise above its characters’ less interesting personal dramas.
-
Self-important much? There’s an awful lot of big emotion on this show, which is my polite way of saying that it’s pretty soapy. ... But there’s a “Lost”-like mystery afoot that drew me in, as the passengers begin to experience similar after-effects.
-
Manifest moves fast, but it plays like a ticket to nowhere.
-
Seems like it should be a movie instead of a serialized weekly series.
-
It's always difficult with such concepts -- and perhaps this one more than most -- to see whether the producers can sustain enough interest to keep the show airborne.
-
The first hour didn’t grab me hard enough that I want to stick around to find out.
-
Manifest has a frustrating lack of propulsion, a central dullness whose force field is so strong it bends all the interesting parts toward itself.
-
All I can speculate based on the pilot is that either none of the characters on that airplane are interesting or else the pilot made a huge mistake in terms of which characters to lead with. The Stones are, simply, dull. They're very pretty, mind you. And they're very earnest.
-
What if Lost, except generic and forgettable? That essentially describes Manifest. ... The execution doesn’t seem to be there. The problem with Manifest isn’t that it’s trying too blatantly hard to be a pseudo-Lost reboot. It’s that even after that turbulence hits, it doesn’t capture how it feels for these characters’ worlds to be shaken.
-
The premise is certainly alluring, which is why it’s so disheartening to discover Manifest’s lack of imagination or intuition for what it might feel like, in the show’s lead example, for an extended family to be suddenly reunited. ... A viewer who might have been interested in the human element is instead served a cold plate of mystery meat--not the new “Lost,” but a feeble throwback to forgettable failures such as “The Event.”
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 38 out of 62
-
Mixed: 13 out of 62
-
Negative: 11 out of 62
-
Oct 5, 2018
-
Sep 26, 2018
-
Apr 11, 2019