50
In the final count, nothing is satisfactorily resolved because tensions remain unexplored, while the atmospherically beautiful images merely entice and divert. The result is little more than a discreetly artistic horror film.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
It’s the characters’ ceaseless need to fully understand, outsmart, and undermine nature’s sway that drives them into fervor and, often enough, leads them to shuffle off this mortal coil.
50
Director Peter Weir struggles to create an atmosphere of mystical languor, dissolving his actors in blinding sunlight and filling his sound track with the faintly ominous rustles of nature. But the deenergized drama leads only to anticlimax, as Weir suggests much more than he shows and invites the audience to fill in the meanings.
100
A fascinating film that is by turns fascinating and mysterious.
100
Weir builds atmosphere one detail and lingering shot at a time. The cluttered, shadowy interiors of the school contrast with the open spaces and welcoming light of Hanging Rock, but the film makes neither feel like a safe place. Every moment feels designed to be unsettling, but the film also creates a sense of inevitability, that whatever is happening can’t be avoided, and should perhaps be embraced.
100
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
A film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria.
80
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
The result is a movie that is both spooky and sexy.