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Lord of the Flies

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United Kingdom · 1963
Rated PG-13 · 1h 32m
Director Peter Brook
Starring James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards, Roger Elwin
Genre Adventure, Drama, Thriller

Amidst a nuclear war, a plane carrying a group of schoolboys crash lands on a deserted island. With no adult survivors, the boys are forced to fend for themselves. At first they cooperate, but when they split into two separate camps their society falls into disarray, leading to a disturbing examination of human nature.

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What are critics saying?

50

Variety by

The theme of young boys reverting to savagery when marooned on a deserted island has its moments of truth, but this pic rates as a near-miss on many counts.

80

CineVue by Christopher Machell

William Golding’s tale of public schoolboys stranded on a desert island is an iconic depiction of fundamental savagery. More than fifty years on, Peter Brook’s 1963 Lord of the Flies remains the definitive film, its hallucinogenic brutality as terrifying as ever.

50

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

William Golding's 1954 allegory on man's innate inhumanity is too facile by half, which makes it ideal for high school English classes but rather too gaseous and predictable for the movies.

80

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

Like Golding's novel, Flies wears its allegorical impulses on its sleeve, but, also like Golding's novel, it rings uncomfortably true.

90

The Dissolve by Scott Tobias

As it stands, Brook’s adaptation is an encroaching nightmare of innocence lost, following Golding’s thesis about what happens when civilization breaks down and man’s true nature is revealed.

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