In the Bedroom

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The surehandedly wrought, beautifully acted, almost unbearably tense In the Bedroom is a rare film, not to be missed.

Newsweek David Ansen

The compositions, the editing, the lighting, the sound, the music: everything seems meticulously considered, conjuring up a hushed intimacy that instantly sucks you in.

Slate David Edelstein

The best movie of the last several years: the most evocative, the most mysterious, the most inconsolably devastating.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

When a film as profoundly quiet as In the Bedroom comes along, it feels almost miraculous, as if a shimmering piece of art had slipped below the radar and through the minefield of commerce.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A lot of actors are labeled "brave" for taking on difficult scripts like this, but Spacek is the real thing: an artist first, without vanity, and a movie star almost by default.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

When it comes to the realistic portrayal of the complex process of grief, most actresses are at a loss. Sissy Spacek is decidedly not most actresses.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

With performances that will raise the hairs on the back of your head, it's a film that knows the private geography of love, grief and obsession.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The uncoagulated anguish of parents mourning the death of a child has rarely been more powerfully depicted than in the collected vignettes of grief, rage, and retribution that make up the riveting domestic drama In the Bedroom.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There are scenes as true as movies can make them, and even when the story develops thriller elements, they are redeemed, because the movie isn't about what happens, but about why.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The kind of movie they don't make any more -- a seriously beautiful, deliberately paced drama that meanders for a while at the pace of a summer romance, then explodes with phenomenal force.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Demanding, harrowing and very, very real. You won't shake its impact easily.

The New Yorker David Denby

Field achieves so convincing a picture of everday normality that when violence breaks out one feels the same disbelief that one feels when it breaks out in life. [26 Nov 2001, p. 121]

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

For all its flaws, In the Bedroom is an unusual accomplishment, a serious drama about violence and morality that plays out with a fatalistic intensity somewhere between Greek tragedy and film noir.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

An uncommonly good movie - a thriller that transcends thrills to become a heartfelt and heart-stopping personal drama.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The actors, as a powerful and convincing ensemble, are equally understated and just as devastating.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Field does what most American directors don't: He shows people at work, in the day-to-day activity unmarked by excitement.

USA Today Mike Clark

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It sneaks up on you and shakes you: a tale of the cold hell surging up beneath that windy, sensuous Wyeth landscape.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Tremendously affecting on several levels, In the Bedroom is must-see viewing for anyone who complains Hollywood doesn't make movies for grownups.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Meticulously observed and devastatingly well-acted.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Goes the distance to avoid banalizing the dilemma of a reasonable couple unhinged by unreasonable events.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

If Dubus' work always resembled some sort of literary therapy session, as has often been said, then Field's version requires grief counseling. It is, at times, that devastating.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Beautifully acted by a diverse ensemble, this Good Machine production is carefully crafted and deliberately paced.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Field made a thriller about what we are capable of in the name of hatred -- and of love.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's a human drama, drawn in such careful emotional detail, its two acts of violence -- one shown, one not -- are almost incidental.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Directed by newcomer Todd Field, who has a sensitive eye and a knack for storytelling.

Film Threat Tim Merrill

A courageous film, especially from a first-time director, and deserves all the audience support it can attract. It’s a People Story, and it’s About Something. However, it’s also something of a heavy sit.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Short of good, better than awful, it opens brilliantly, then just goes on, toward self-negating absurdity.

Chicago Reader Ronnie Scheib

A killer ending does not a movie make, and ultimately In the Bedroom may be more interesting to talk about than sit through.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Increasingly unconvincing, In the Bedroom turns genteel rabble-rouser. Field's leisurely buildup forestalls but doesn't prevent his movie's mutation into a granola "Death Wish."