High Life
A24 | Release Date: April 5, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 1, 2021
The lure of intense mystery that beguiles you into trying to solve it again and again; the transference of an intoxication that makes you feel physically different afterwards. It sounds hyperbolic to describe art as having such power, but surely the reason we care about art is a belief that such power exists. High Life is too layered, too ambiguous, too potent to be about any one thing. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 15, 2019
As with so many of Denis’ films, the point is to contrive an overwhelmingly powerful mood and moment, an almost physiological sensation, this one incubated in the vast, cold reaches of space. It throbbed and itched with me long after the film was over. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Simran HansMay 14, 2019
The gravitational pull of sex, death and the void is palpable. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzApr 5, 2019
With its brutal violence, explicit sex, and up-close views of blood, sweat, urine, and semen, it is proudly an R-rated film, verging on NC-17—though the X-rating, which was discontinued by the MPAA almost 30 years ago, might feel more appropriate. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellSep 15, 2018
What Denis’ film is concerned with is the visceral bodily experience and the claustrophobia of living in the middle of the infinite. If outer space is a cold and vast external of nothingness, then there is also an interior space of bodies, living, writhing, and fluid. Read full review
100
The Film StageJosh LewisSep 13, 2018
The crew’s suffering is bleak and oppressive, but Denis invites us to witness it so that we truly understand the power of Monte’s conviction in his improvised mission...and Denis is so emotionally in tune with what that might feel like it becomes overwhelming. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 12, 2018
By twisting around preconceptions of what an outer-space epic should be, French auteur Claire Denis returns to the fertile ground of her Trouble Every Day era, using genre to dig beneath themes that others would only treat as skin-deep. Read full review
100
Screen DailyAllan HunterSep 10, 2018
High Life offers an uncompromising mind-bender of a deep space journey through destructive desire, faith, trust and the instincts for good and bad that make us merely human. Read full review
100
The GuardianCharles BramescoSep 10, 2018
With an achievement of this calibre it’s hard to resist hyperbole: High Life contains the single greatest one-person sex scene in the history of cinema. Read full review
95
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 4, 2019
For all its body horrors and apocalyptic conclusions, High Life is one of Denis’s most loving and tender creations. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 10, 2018
High Life is fixated on the hypnotic rhythms of oblivion, and the human desires it brings to the surface. Read full review
90
TheWrapDave WhiteApr 4, 2019
It begins in a lush, green garden, but High Life, the quiet, bracing and ultimately moving first English-language film from acclaimed French director Claire Denis, is the antithesis of a creation story. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 4, 2019
Denis’s movies can be imaginative and poetic; sometimes they’re unflinchingly brutal. High Life, her first English-language picture, is all of those things, a work of great beauty that’s also at times difficult to watch. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMay 2, 2019
Anyone who’s seen Beau Travail knows that Denis is a master of color. Here she uses the ship’s lighting system to shift between cool, medical blues and warm, arousing reds. And in the “garden,” a lush conservatory space where the crew grows their food, the deep greens evoke a primordial Eden, a place where nakedness carried no shame. The goings-on in High Life—including two instances of sexual assault—are like a crash landing into the Fall. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMaureen RyanApr 9, 2019
Transfixing? A bore? I cannot answer for you. If think Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is as far out as you go with this sort of setting, this is not your thing. Undeniably, though, High Life is an organic achievement. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneSep 10, 2018
The film asks down-and-dirty questions about what really resides beneath thousands of years of human progress, a savage and haunting antidote to the high-minded idealism of movies like Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Ridley Scott's The Martian. Read full review
84
Paste MagazineDom SinacolaApr 12, 2019
It’s not always clear that Denis’ film is convincing enough to prove a point, or if any point it would prove is inevitably consumed by the nihilism at the core of its narrative. It simply exists, finds a moment of empathy now and then, is maybe pointless in the end. Like every one of us. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceyApr 18, 2019
Anyone expecting a crowd-pleasing crossover movie from the French director of modern art-house landmarks like Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum may be ill-prepared for this perplexing, repellent/fascinating vision of bodies in tight spaces. Read full review
83
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 14, 2018
It is, for all of its action, and unexpected hints of the underbelly of humanity, and bodily fluids, actually quite a languid, melancholy film. It doesn’t shock its viewers, nor does Denis seem to have any interest in doing so. It quietly, meticulously unmoors them instead. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 11, 2018
In terms of mood, cosmetics, and rhythm, it’s a worthy addition to the great filmmaker’s canon. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 9, 2019
Denis has made a spellbindingly mysterious object – as nonsensical as existence, maybe, until you give it a quarter-turn, and look again. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerMay 7, 2019
A sci-fi thriller starring Robert Pattinson suggests that Claire Denis has gone all mainstream. But High Life is the filmmaker at her most dark, a mesmerising, patience-testing, violent exploration in the darkest reaches of outer and inner space. Read full review
80
The VergeScott TobiasApr 4, 2019
Claire Denis’ grotesque, mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind new science fiction movie. Read full review
80
Time OutCourtney DuckworthApr 3, 2019
Sparse in dialogue, High Life demands unrelenting restraint from Pattinson, whose Monte, an off-kilter ascetic, is fascinating. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 3, 2019
Denis’ coolly appalling vision gets an infusion of warmth from [Robert] Pattinson, an actor of brooding intelligence and remarkable physical grace. Read full review
80
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 2, 2019
With Denis there’s always more than meets the prism of snap judgements. Let the movie mess with your head. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangSep 10, 2018
This kinky, often grotesque melding of genre science-fiction with all-out body horror is an audacious project, but the scope of its ambition is cleverly reined in by the low-key presentation, its more salacious potential muted down to an insistent threatening hum, like the background radiation of Stuart Staples’ score. Read full review
75
Boston GlobePeter KeoughApr 10, 2019
Never has space travel looked so sordid, debased, mean-spirited, or crummy, qualities intensified by the (intentionally) ugliest cinematography ever — except for the close-ups of faces — from the great Agnès Godard, Denis’s longtime collaborator. But seldom has space travel served as such an eloquent and tragic representation of the human condition. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrApr 9, 2019
I’m still not entirely sure what it all adds up to, but it is provocative, difficult and bleak and leaves you with a very precise feeling of despair and aloneness — just like the best of the space independents do. Read full review
75
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsSep 14, 2018
The movie seems to be a study of the artificial limits we put on our desires—and the ways those desires naturally betray us. This being Denis, she of course goes above and beyond merely exposing those limits; she must also, of course, expose the audience’s limits in the process. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 10, 2018
High Life feels longer than it is, and is occasionally so squirrely that it becomes off-putting. But in spite of the aforementioned traceable connections, it’s a true original — sometimes strange, sometimes scary, sometimes kinky. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 8, 2019
Denis delves into the group psychology of a beleaguered crew, housed in an interplanetary rust bucket. Her devotees will claim, correctly, that her movie blooms with provocative ideas. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyApr 5, 2019
High Life is, at turns, gorgeous, ridiculous, and confounding. Yet, the more you wrestle with it, the more it haunts you. As for Pattinson, who commits as fully as ever, he can rest easy knowing that he’s left his audience another riddle to chew on. Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonApr 10, 2019
High Life has the trippy profundity of 2001, the human treachery of Aliens, and it also includes an Orgasmatron. Read full review
63
Washington PostMark JenkinsApr 10, 2019
Even ardent Pattinson fandom won’t be enough to convert mainstream American audiences to the art-house director’s dark outlook and elliptical style. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerSep 10, 2018
Without Denis’ typically transfixing aesthetics and with a storyline that lumbers along in places, High Life is not always an easy sit, even if occasional outbursts of violence spice up the action in distressing ways. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 25, 2019
It’s not entertaining. It’s discomforting at times, and at others obtuse and downright icky. But it does leave you with a little to chew on, if somewhat less that its creator presumes. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 12, 2019
It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 4, 2019
Too often the ideas here, visual and otherwise, feel haphazard — outer and inner space, Pattinson’s head, sexual taboo, apocalypse now or maybe then — more like material for a vision board than a fully realized vision. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 10, 2019
High Life is a meandering mess of symbolism, half-thoughts, ponderous exchanges, and emotional dead ends, one that confuses ambiguity for an unengaging air of vagueness. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicSamantha IncorvaiaApr 9, 2019
[Denis] definitely never holds back from shocking the audience with multiple sudden deaths, haunting rape scenes and various graphic moments. But with such little character development, why invest in these stories? Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedSep 28, 2018
An unwatchable sci-fi creep-out by eccentric French director Claire Denis, it stars Robert Pattinson, who devotes himself these days to art films in an effort to live down his reputation as a sexy television vampire. Read full review
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