Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis

This is a movie you feel deeply in the pit of your stomach. Sometimes, it literally hurts to watch it.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

The mountain, grim and unforgiving, remains the star.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

This is what filmed spectacle used to look like — a trip to a place or time most of us could never see.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

It lacks the same constant surprises of last year's "Gravity" or the visual poetry of "Mad Max: Fury Road," but Kormákur's movie nonetheless marks the rare fusion of effective craftsmanship with focused storytelling.

Time Out London by Dave Calhoun

Kormákur creates such a convincing world – the craft of this film is astonishing – that you’re willing to forgive its less delicate touches in favour of its totally compelling depiction of what it must be like to ascend into a place that’s heaven one moment and hell the very next.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

With its perilous central premise and gallery of individuals some of whom are destined not to make it, you could say Everest is a disaster movie in the old Hollywood sense of the term, but it doesn't feel like one. And that's a good thing.

New Orleans Times-Picayune by Mike Scott

It succeeds wonderfully, offering moviegoers a rare taste of rarified air -- and as compelling an argument as you can make for seeing a movie writ large on the oversized screen of an actual movie theater.

New York Daily News by Jacob Hall

Like the mountain for which it’s named, Everest is rock solid. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, and it’s merciless to both its characters and the audience.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

There's only one star in this movie: Everest. Kormákur couldn't shoot higher than base camp, around 14,000 feet, without sickening the actors. But a crew traveled to the top to get footage, while much of the climbing was shot in the Dolomites. No matter. You watch Everest and you believe.

Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper

Based on true events, filled with stunning visuals and featuring more than a half-dozen of our best actors delivering solid performances, Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest is a high-altitude roller coaster ride that will leave you drained.

Variety by Justin Chang

Kormakur doesn’t make the mistake of exalting his subjects as extraordinary individuals, or suggesting that they were obeying some sort of noble higher calling. Everest is blunt, businesslike and — as it begins its long march through the death zone — something of an achievement.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

Salvatore Totino's crisp 3D photography and Kormakur's way with a clear, fluid, thrilling action sequence show off the mountain in immensely impressive ways. But the humans involved get short shrift.

TheWrap by Alonso Duralde

This is one of those cases where fictionalizing a true event, or at least fusing two or three real people into one composite character, might have resulted in tighter storytelling.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The hardship of the trek is vividly and stomach-lurchingly portrayed, particularly when the storm sets in, but it never makes the crucial leap from the screen into your bones.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Ultimately, Everest is not concerned with the why, but with the how and it's grimly efficient at building up the drama, helped on by Clarke's wonderful character study, even if the film as a whole never quite reaches the dizzying heights of its subject.

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

While it’s impossible not to be somewhat caught up in these climbers’ life-or-death struggle, Everest is oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.

Screen International by Tim Grierson

While it’s impossible not to be somewhat caught up in these climbers’ life-or-death struggle, Everest is oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Everest is a frustrating movie in many ways – despite some lurches and shocks, it doesn’t quite deliver the edge-of-your-seat thrills that many were hoping for, and all those moderately engaging characters mean that there is no centrally powerful character.