Maps to the Stars
Focus World | Release Date: February 27, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
11
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Total FilmJames MottramFeb 27, 2015
Detractors may carp that Cronenberg is showing us nothing new, but Maps is so flawless in its execution, it vividly refreshes the subject matter. Never overcooking the setting, it’s a story right in his wheelhouse; a very human look at characters barely clinging to their humanity. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 24, 2014
There’s so much in this seething cauldron of a film, so many film-industry neuroses exposed and horrors nested within horrors, that one viewing is too much, and not nearly enough. Cronenberg has made a film that you want to unsee – and then see and unsee again. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 27, 2015
Please don’t bore me by complaining that the characters are “unlikable.” The defense admits that the movie is indefensible. Just breathe in the aroma of decay and howl like a banshee. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 5, 2015
It's a strange, fascinating exercise in what Joel Coen once described as "tone management," job No. 1 for any director. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 26, 2015
You can laugh with Maps to the Stars, but you can't laugh it off. Prepare to be knocked for a loop. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezFeb 26, 2015
Maps to the Stars is haunted by ghosts, the way the film industry is haunted by its past, and Cronenberg gradually tapers down the dark humor and starts to amp up the ugliness of these blank, superficial lives. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Geoff PevereOct 31, 2014
The creepiest haunted Hollywood movie since "Mulholland Drive," David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars is working an even deeper graveyard groove than David Lynch did. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineBudd WilkinsSep 21, 2014
If the research that Cronenberg and Wagner engaged in for Maps to the Stars oftentimes appears more entomological than sociological, there's nonetheless a plaintive chord of melancholy that plays throughout the film. Read full review
83
The PlaylistOliver LytteltonMay 24, 2014
The film is a sickly enjoyable wallow in the scandalous, fucked-up side of showbusiness, and a real return to form for the filmmaker. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnMay 24, 2014
While not the director's canniest piece of filmmaking, it's unquestionably his angriest, politically motivated achievement. Every missive hits its target hard with a comedy-horror combo aimed squarely at the kind of commercial stupidity that Cronenberg has avoided throughout his 45-year career. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsGraham FullerFeb 26, 2015
For all its venom, “Maps” is one of the more compassionate movies from Cronenberg (“A Dangerous Method,” “Eastern Promises”). The corrosive humor and icy tone eventually give way to melancholy. No one here can be saved. Read full review
80
EmpireIan NathanSep 22, 2014
The Canadian horror maestro scrapes away the surface of Hollywood to discover a magnificently Cronenbergian outbreak of tortured families, reprehensible behaviour and extreme violence. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2014
The status-anxiety, fame-vertigo, sexual satiety and that all-encompassing fear of failure which poisons every triumph are displayed here with an icy new connoisseurship, a kind of extremism which faces down the traditional objection that films like this are secretly infatuated with their subject. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 24, 2014
A brutal, crackling and savage Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars knows exactly where it's going, carefully breaking every rule in the book. After carefully constructing his crystal kingdom, Cronenberg launches his stones with dark, mischievous joy. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiFeb 25, 2015
Screenwriter Bruce Wagner (who's been skillfully dissecting Hollywood misfits high and low since his 1991 novel, "Force Majeure") has crafted a darkly humorous moral fable that Cronenberg embraces with unabashed glee. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc MohanFeb 27, 2015
Once things get going, and especially when Moore takes center stage, "Maps" becomes more involving, sometimes queasily funny, and even, almost despite itself, a tiny bit moving. Hooray for Hollywood, indeed. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzFeb 27, 2015
By the time you get to the end, Cronenberg has pinned all his people against the screen like so many laboratory specimens, ripped off their scabs, and vivisected their longings: an old wound here, a long--deferred dream there. Still, the movie sticks with you. It's a fleeting nightmare that refuses to fade. Read full review
75
Washington PostStephanie MerryFeb 26, 2015
The movie can be over-the-top and the characters are rarely anything more than vile. And yet, the whole thing is mesmerizing. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsFeb 26, 2015
An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 2, 2015
Maps to the Stars is at its most potent and beautiful by far when it becomes a ghost story — when the departed, not just Havana’s mother, return to quiz the living. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinFeb 26, 2015
In its own disturbing, slithery way, the train-wreck watchable melodrama Maps to the Stars is as much a horror show as any that the film's director, David Cronenberg, has helmed over his long and provocative career. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 26, 2015
It takes a perverse effort of will to love “Maps to the Stars.” It’s a little too chilly, and in some places too easy. But you may find yourself drawn back to it, and retracing its route from the familiar to the uncanny, from entertainment to revulsion, from dream to nightmare. Read full review
70
The DissolveKeith PhippsFeb 24, 2015
Some of the gags Bruce Wagner’s script lands about the business of Hollywood and the insanity it breeds call out for rimshots that Cronenberg never supplies. The silence can be awkward, but it’s just as often fascinating. Read full review
70
Film.comJordan HoffmanMay 20, 2014
Cronenberg’s map doesn’t lead to a satisfying destination in a typical story sense, but it is a remarkable quest. For a movie that has so many problems, it is one of the more watchable ones. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 26, 2015
A lot of the movie works, but enough doesn’t for Maps to the Stars to go down as a lost opportunity and one of this director’s braver missteps. Read full review
60
SlateDana StevensFeb 26, 2015
When every character is always operating at maximum loathsomeness, it can be difficult to recalibrate your disgust-o-meter. I suspect this sense of moral vertigo, and the resulting nausea, is part of what Cronenberg is after, but his skill at evoking those states in the viewer doesn’t make the experience of watching Maps to the Stars any less sour. Read full review
60
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekFeb 24, 2015
The fact that Cronenberg directed almost works against Maps to the Stars: We expect greatness from him, not just proficiency, and he doesn't exactly have a gift for comedy, not even the black kind. But the movie still has the darkly glittering Cronenberg touch, even if it's just a light brushing. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 24, 2014
Cronenberg assumes a distinctly clinical approach to the emotional, social and business shenanigans on display here, a perspective that has brilliantly served some of his overtly psychological, horror and sci-fi pieces but gives this one a brittle and airless feel. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 24, 2014
What stops David Cronenberg’s grotesque noir Maps to the Stars, written by LA insider Bruce Wagner, from feeling tired is that it’s deliciously odd. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 25, 2015
It’s a movie you’ve seen many times before, just never in the perverse key of Cronenberg. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 5, 2015
It’s well-made and well-acted, but it’s also a grotesque, self-indulgent and ultimately tiresome satire that leaves behind an unpleasant stench. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 26, 2015
In "The Player," Robert Altman carves up Hollywood with knowing, surgical precision. Cronenberg is a gifted filmmaker in his own right, but here he takes a meat-ax to the place. He gets what he's after but leaves quite a mess. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigFeb 26, 2015
If a pointless and nasty Hollywood satire filled with vile characters and no one to root for sounds like a good time, go see Maps to the Stars. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 25, 2015
This unblinking yet unsatisfying ensemble drama features kinky sex, ruthless opportunism, violence and psychosis. Very Cronenberg. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 24, 2014
Maps struggles to mix its various genres: Part showbiz sendup, part ghost story, part dysfunctional-family drama, the movie instead comes across as so much jaded mumbo-jumbo. Read full review
50
HitfixDrew McWeenyMay 24, 2014
Julianne Moore seems to be the one person in the film that truly gets the tone right, playing Havana like a person walking a tightrope over a yawning pit of psychosis, her every emotion bubbling up and threatening to knock her off. Read full review
25
Entertainment WeeklyStaff (Not credited)Feb 25, 2015
The goal here is cynical satire. The result, sadly, is just a yawn. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickFeb 25, 2015
Hard-core Hollywood haters will best appreciate Maps to the Stars, a campy poison-pen letter to Tinseltown that makes “Sunset Boulevard’’ look like a tourism infomercial by comparison. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedFeb 25, 2015
She’s (Moore) the best thing in this toxic carnage of creepy, self-indulgent decadence, but under the direction of loopy Canadian David Cronenberg, she goes beyond the limit of acceptable artistry. Read full review
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