Twisted

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Twisted is an unusual forensic crime film because it's witty and sophisticated as well as taut and creepy.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Twisted is a movie so derivative it's hard to pinpoint exactly how many other thrillers it poaches from.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A neo-noir movie nightmare gone sadly wrong.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

By Twisted's final twist, though, it's all Judd can do to keep a straight face.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

It's always rather sad to watch gifted performers stranded in a tepid thriller. You can see them, as professional pretenders, trying to believe that they're creating a character, but the lie is transparent -- all they're really doing is advancing a retarded plot.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

A snore.

Empire Anna Smith

The movie may dole out a few guilty pleasures, but you won’t believe a word of it.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Laborious and nonsensical psychological thriller, a mediocre piece of studio hackwork unredeemed by a first-rate director.

Premiere Sara Brady

Laughably clichéd, abominably written, astonishingly dreadful attempt at a psycho-sexual thriller.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Twisted is a D-grade thriller with an A-list cast. It's a disappointment from start to finish...But, in the final quarter-hour, it committed the unpardonable sin of insulting my intelligence.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Walks like a thriller and talks like a thriller, but it squawks like a turkey.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is by far Kaufman's worst outing since becoming a major filmmaker more than a quarter-century ago, and the fact that his only other stinker from this period is 1993's "Rising Sun" means that maybe he ought to stay away from cop melodramas.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

No one associated with the film tries very hard, from cinematographer Peter Deming -- San Francisco has never looked so drab -- to composer Mark Isham, whose watery jazz score is meant to summon melancholy but merely relieves insomnia.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's an old maxim that you can't make a good movie from a bad script. But with the suspense thriller Twisted, Philip Kaufman shows that you can make one that looks like it should be good.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Totally unwatchable if it weren't for Ashley Judd.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Twisted is rubbish, but it looks good enough, moves fast enough and does improve as it progresses, principally because its plot disintegrtes to the point of outright comedy.

Newsweek David Ansen

Sarah Thorp’s lazy script lurches from the lame to the ludicrous.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Director Philip Kaufman's usual flair for erotic detail largely deserts him here, and this thriller seems most interested in lingering over battered and bloodied male faces.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Gives new meaning to the word "obvious."

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Insipid embarrassment.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Combining the ludicrous with the lurid, Twisted is twisted all right.

Variety Scott Foundas

A dreary, weary psychosexual thriller that's neither sexy nor thrilling.

Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown

A pretty lousy movie, which would be offensive were it not safely neutered by its own stupidity.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Surely it couldn't be meant as dramatic realism! But it is. And amazingly, the movie gets worse as it goes along.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie is a resounding dud: immaculately composed and shot (very much in the Kaufman tradition), but riddled with crime-movie cliches, wincingly obvious in its plot twists and rather badly acted.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Not surprisingly, only Samuel L. Jackson seems fully to understand that he's in a bad movie, and he makes a virtue of it, using it as an excuse to hang loose, overact and ride the scenes for wherever they might go.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Eerily similar in its story line to "In the Cut," the much pasted Meg Ryan sex-and-death thriller that came out last year. Only it's worse.

Slate David Edelstein

Kaufman proves again how miraculously in synch with his material he can be. Directing a fourth-rate, maladroit, derivative mystery, he becomes a fourth-rate, maladroit, derivative director--worse even than a TV-movie hack.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Ridiculously overwrought.

Village Voice Jorge Morales

No mystery here: Twisted is D.O.A.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

In the hands of a more gleefully provocative filmmaker, this variation on the standard erotic-thriller stew of sleaze, tease and murder, this ludicrous farrago might have been tawdry fun.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Twisted marks a bottoming-out for pretty much everyone involved, particularly Judd and director Philip Kaufman, who should know better. The film is the creative equivalent of waking up naked in a puddle of cheap wine and vomit.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

So utterly devoid of suspense, energy or credibility it should have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster.