RogerEbert.com by Marya E. Gates

I was blown away by the film’s use of mostly archival news footage after its premiere at Sundance earlier this year. Upon a second watch I found it even more compelling the way Perkins, and editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira, expertly deploy this footage to tell not a biography of ‘The People’s Princess,’ but rather of the way the media shaped the perception of her public life.

Observer by Emily Zemler

It’s a startlingly intimate experience, carrying the viewer from Diana’s engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 to her death in 1997, and Perkins largely focuses on Diana’s reactions to various circumstances. It’s easy to see her unhappiness, even when she’s putting on a happy face.

IndieWire by Kate Erbland

Without the influx of talking heads and other bits of opinion and information, the audience is forced to confront their own judgements. ... The effect is ingenious and chilling.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is captivating and agonising all over again to see how dazzling Diana was, how simple and spontaneous she was compared with both the stuffy royals but also the secular celebrity class – how she instinctively knew to work with the press when it was still essentially sympathetic, but how panicky and dysfunctional she became when this same press became boorish and predatory.

The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide

Combining news footage, interviews, blustering commentators and vox pops, the film serves as an accusatory finger pointed at public appetites and the press that fed them, and a cautionary tale.

Variety by Owen Gleiberman

A perfectly timed, compulsively watchable once-over-lightly documentary. ... After all [the recent] dramatic treatments, it’s galvanizing to see the real story laid out exactly as it happened — or, more precisely, as it happened and as it was presented to the public, those being, quite often, two very different things.

Film Threat by Sabina Dana Plasse

Perkins brings an entirely new perspective to her life and the events that lead to her untimely death.

CNN by Brian Lowry

The amount of new information in "The Princess" will likely depend on one's personal Royals-related media consumption, but the packaging of this stark and intimate documentary -- marking the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's death -- serves as a sobering reminder of how the press hounded her from the moment of her engagement until her tragic death.

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

This is a harrowing movie that depends on our collective hindsight to underscore its manifold and particular ironies.

The Film Stage by John Fink

Perkins’ approach, however, could be read more as an exercise in media study than biopic of Diana. It adds to the canon but not the lure of the mythical “People’s Princess.”

Slashfilm by Chris Evangelista

It's a handsomely constructed, often addictive documentary – but it's also repeating the same story we've been told again and again.

Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan

A palpably well-made documentary if an uber-voyeuristic one, The Princess attempts an immersive approach into the life of Diana, while examining the attitude of the public to her – and the royal family – during that time.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The Princess tells us nothing we don’t already know, but there’s bracing value in seeing it crisply spelled out.

The Hollywood Reporter by Caryn James

A flawed little time capsule, the doc veers uneasily between kindly character portrait and shallow attempt at media studies.