42
Strangerland starts off promisingly enough, but it just can't decide where it wants to go, or even how to get there.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
The progressive wrinkles...are both the fascination and the frustration of Strangerland, which strains credulity with its secrets and revelations to facilitate its surprises.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
The film remains stranded in a sort of genre no man’s land.
58
The A.V. Club by Jesse Hassenger
Intentionally or not, Farrant and her screenwriters leave a hole at the center of their film.
20
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
The brooding and emotional prickliness gets overwhelming. Kidman tries her best to flesh out her character, but writer-director Kim Farrant gives this still-undervalued actress little to do.
25
Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper
Maybe the dingo ate their screenplay.
40
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Though Kidman is solid as a wife and mom tormented by her daughter's secret erotic life, Strangerland never successfully welds its central mystery with its psychosexual drapings, leaving neither especially interesting.
63
Best of all is this setting — stark, reddish brown and sun-baked, the sort of place one only goes when every other possibility has been exhausted, and only movie stars could avoid turning instantly tanned and weathered.
63
Washington Post by Stephanie Merry
It’s hard to get over the movie’s haunting atmosphere. It may be just another story of kids in peril, but this one’s particularly hard to shake.
40
Screen International by Tim Grierson
The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Kim Farrant is undone by a series of overwrought, miscalculated scenes that can’t be redeemed by an expert cast that’s fully committed to the heavy-handedness.