It's not easy to make a thriller that's both incredibly convoluted and intensely boring, but director E. Elias Merhige scores on both counts with this lame excuse for a spooky crime story.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Dallas Observer by Gregory Weinkauf
Merhige is too talented to be dismissed as a wannabe, but here his gifts for clever angles and oogy feelings are tethered to blasé genre redundancies and clunky storytelling. Looks great, less thrilling. I blame the screenwriters.
Given nothing to do, Carrie-Anne Moss looks on from the sidelines as the film halfheartedly toys with the tired old notion that only a thin line separates the dogged investigator and the compulsive killer. She looks bored, and she should.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
Suspect Zero has enough going for it to eventually develop a cult following. But compared to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven," it's still the minor leagues.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
Kingsley gets the film's one big emotional scene and makes it count.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The truth is, the freakiness kinda turns the director on, and he nearly strangles Suspect Zero with love.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
The script isn't really good enough to worry about whether it's being over-directed; in fact, E. Elias Merhige's over-direction is one of the best things about this movie--along with Ben Kingsley's grimly unstoppable killer-of-killers, Benjamin O'Ryan.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
Fails to provide one essential ingredient: suspense.