Metascore

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 25 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 17 Ratings

  • Starring: Eva Amurri, Evan Rachel Wood, Uma Thurman
  • Summary: The Life Before Her Eyes is an intense and visually evocative drama about the loss of youth, investigating how a single moment in time can define an entire life. Based on Laura Kasischke's visionary novel, the story hinges on a pivotal confrontation: two high school girls held captive by a gunman and forced to make the terrifying choice as to who will live and who will die. The Life Before Her Eyes explores the reverberations stemming from the collision of past and future, reality and dream. Life can end in an instant--yet the echoes of possible futures remain inescapable. Moving backward and forward in time, it combines the dramatic intensity of Sophie's Choice with the eerie mystery of a ghost story like The Others. (Magnolia) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 25
  2. Negative: 11 out of 25
  1. Emotionally sophisticated, humane and worth talking about for hours.
  2. 75
    Of the two timelines, the one featuring the teenage Diana is more involving than the one featuring the adult version. Both lead actresses give fine performances, but Thurman has less material to work with.
  3. Boasting two terrific performances by Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood as the adult and teenage versions of the same character.
  4. 38
    When the big twist is revealed at the end of The Life Before Her Eyes, you might think the only way to appreciate its cleverness is to see the film again. I did that. It didn't help.

See all 25 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 5
  2. Negative: 1 out of 5
  1. Richard.
    10
    The critics could not be more wrong. This is the most profound and emotional film of the year so far. It's sad that many people will not see it based on the copycat critics reviews. Expand
  2. Brynhotness
    10
    I thought this movie was phenomenal and i watched some of this movie was shot on the street right next to mine and i think all fo the actors and actresses did a teriffic job!!!!!!!! Expand
  3. ChadS.
    8
    When the good girl met the bad girl in Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen", the bad girl exerted her will on the good girl, and the good girl became bad. The good girl was played by Evan Rachel Wood. This time, in "The Life Before Her Eyes", she's the bad girl, who meets a good girl, and she becomes a good girl, too. The good girl is played by Eva Amurri. Diana McFee(Uma Thurman) can thank Maureen for the woman she is today. But where is Maureen? The last time we saw her, she was in a high school girls' bathroom with her best friend and the gunman. Since "The Life Before Her Eyes" predicates itself as a sort of "Donnie Darko" for women, Maureen's fate isn't wholly determinisitic, because the past is present, the past is fluid, as Diana rewrites her history, her husband and child's history, and especially, Maureen's history from a contemporary epoch(the weeks leading up to the fifteenth anniversary of the massacre) that runs parallel to the past. Like Alejandro Agresti's "The Lake House", this "My So-Called Elephant" is sci-fi for women who don't like sci-fi. Expand
  4. Enrique
    4
    Barely convincing. Uma Thurmann is fine but the script is too contrived. A big disappointment.

See all 5 User Reviews