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Metascore
31 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 16
  3. Negative: 8 out of 16
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  1. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    63
    It starts pushing buttons immediately and never lets up. This proves to be both its strongest asset and, unfortunately, its biggest flaw.
  2. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    They has a low-budget, generic feel -- but also enough sense to know that unseen menace is a lot creepier than explicit gore.
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Rich Cline
    60
    While it does deliver some good jolts, it never quite cranks up the terror.
  4. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    50
    Perfectly acceptable, perfectly bland, competently acted but by no means a scary horror movie, in which "they" are coming to get people.
  5. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Though the story eventually runs out of steam and it's never clear why the night-crawlers torment certain children and then come back to get them, fledgling screenwriter Brendan William Hood and director Robert Harmon -- whip up some effective suspense sequences.
  6. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ed Park
    50
    Efficient, suitably anonymous chiller.
  7. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    50
    Sensation, not sense, is the point of this exercise, and what it lacks in originality it makes up for in effective if cheap moments of fright and dread.
  8. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    40
    As far as pronoun horrors go, They can't hold a candle to Them or It, but as an anti-tourism ad for Seattle, it's right up there with The Ring in terms of overcast, glistening panache.
  9. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    38
    A dull, dumb and derivative horror film.
  10. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    30
    They never generates any real fear until its last minutes, by which time it is too late to redeem the dull events that preceded them.
  11. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    30
    The grad student and her boyfriend (Marc Blucas) are blandly written and the story never develops any psychological depth; the paranormal explanation for what's going on is equally slight.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    20
    Craven's name doesn't appear anywhere in the credits of the film otherwise known as They. That's fitting, too, since even the worst Craven-directed movies have a lot more going for them than this painfully familiar bit of oogum-boogum.
  13. Variety
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    20
    They ought to be a whole lot scarier than they are in this tepid genre offering from director Robert Harmon, whose debut film "The Hitcher" set a high bar for screen terror in the 1980s. Pic looks like a holiday gobbler.
  14. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    16
    The hilarious diminuendo of that title is such that the movie might as well have been called ''Wes Craven Presents: Not a Hell of a Lot.''
  15. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    12
    At some point, I just tired of looking at all the nicely composed shots unworthy of the stock they're printed on. Lives are at stake here, and I don't mean Julia's and her annoying pals'. I mean the lives of you and me, the only pronouns that really matter here.
  16. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Paul Malcolm
    10
    The film stinks from start to finish, like a wet burlap sack of gloom.
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