Predestination, a superficially cerebral new thriller, plays almost exclusively to the diagram-drawing crowd.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The film effectively underlines the one undertaking that time-travel fantasies can never truly allow: escape from ourselves.
There are so many interesting ideas and concepts that could have been spun from this framework. Instead, it's the work of a bunch of filmmakers who seemingly wanted to offer up a WTF-worthy twist ending and tried to reverse engineer a movie from it.
Even if Predestination is distinctive chiefly for Snook’s excellent performance, it’s still a tricksy story well-handled by its directors. It doesn’t offer any new twists on the genre, but it is clever enough to leave you satisfied that you don’t want the time back.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Predestination may have the trippiest, weirdest take yet on the time-travel concept.
Predestination succeeds in teasing the brain and touching the heart even when its twists and turns keep multiplying well past the point of narrative sustainability.
It takes talent, in front of and behind the camera, to create something engrossing and new in the timeworn time-travel odyssey. Whatever its shortcomings, Predestination is never at a loss for surprises.
Weirder and more contemplative than many of its time-traveling brethren, Predestination is a stylish head trip. It also marks Australian actor Snook as one to watch, as she demonstrates some serious gender-bending range.
There’s a clarity to Snook’s emotional journey that’s absent from the rest of the film—a fact that’s partly deliberate, since Heinlein and the Spierigs mean to dive into the soup. But amid the murky genre experimentation, it’s a beacon of truth.
Village Voice by Stephanie Zacharek
The Spierigs had the framework for something wonderful here, if only they’d trusted themselves to keep things simple.