Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Its central journey lives up to the title: Maclean finds time to savor rivers and starscapes and layers of light and mountainous land. The dialogue is flighty yet weighty, each line like some delicate woodcut.

Austin Chronicle by William Goss

A folksy fable defined equally by its whimsy and wistfulness.

The Playlist by Rodrigo Pérez

A dark, but spirited fable about the pitilessness of the West, the meaning of home on the range and the worthwhile qualities of wicked, seemingly irredeemable men, “Slow West” is a terrific little parable, and a strong debut by John Maclean worth treasuring.

Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty

Imagine Terrence Malick directing the climax of "The Wild Bunch," and you’re on the right track.

Screen Daily

The saga, directed by a Scot in New Zealand with no American actors, takes us back to American truths. Guns, greed and rugged nature defined the West, setting the New World apart from the old. The roots run deep.

Time Out by David Ehrlich

Like any good Western, Slow West percolates with the constant threat of violence, but debuting feature director John Maclean wrings the genre for its mythic value.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

The director is John Maclean, making his début, and, if he demonstrates how hard it is to handle whimsy, he more than atones for it with two tremendous set pieces — one in a store, and the other in an isolated homestead, girded with cornfields where a shooter can nestle and hide.

Variety by Justin Chang

John Maclean’s impeccably crafted writing-directing debut at times has a distinctly Coen-esque flavor in its mix of sly intelligence, bleak humor and unsettling violence, exuding fierce confidence even when these qualities don’t always cohere in the smoothest or most emotionally impactful fashion.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Maclean's screenplay is unshowy but keen.

New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier

Slow West isn’t a grand epic of that genre. It’s more like “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Dead Man” or the recent “The Homesman,” using familiar signposts to tell a simple, compelling, terrific story.

Screen Daily by David D'Arcy

The saga, directed by a Scot in New Zealand with no American actors, takes us back to American truths. Guns, greed and rugged nature defined the West, setting the New World apart from the old. The roots run deep.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

Maclean and his cast create a sound, tone and feel that makes even a moldy tale like this lean, mean and fresh, even if it never quite transcends the gun smoke of its genre.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

If Slow West never quite settles on a tone to call its own, it does still offer many pleasures. Fassbender and Smit-McPhee are excellent — the boy's outward bewilderment and unpreparedness play off well against the cowboy’s ragged, stone-faced charisma.

IndieWire

Slow West certainly makes a valiant effort to reach beyond expectations of its genre, even leaving room for some welcome tongue-in-cheek humor when it's least expected. But at the end, all its waffling between various stylistic touchstones fails to hold much interest.

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

A pageantry of pseudo-art poses, a self-consciously cool reorientation of the western as silly symphony.