The Pale Blue Eye
Netflix | Release Date: December 23, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
22
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Time OutOlly RichardsDec 23, 2022
Its plot is riddled with holes and its ending is overcooked, but it’s packed with terrific actors – Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, even Robert Duvall – and achieves the light chill of a Christmas ghost story. Not one Poe would have been proud to write, but perhaps the sort of thing he’d read on holiday. Read full review
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyDec 23, 2022
It’s a handsome adaptation, albeit with an unnecessary bit of literary celebrity dragged alongside it. Read full review
60
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaDec 22, 2022
There are snapshots of something greater here; hints of a grander mystery, a bigger twist, a better climax. Alas, we can only ponder, weak and weary, over what that better film could have been. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 22, 2022
As things turn out, this case turns on a rather ridiculous coincidence: but never mind, it’s an entertaining piece of counter-factual noir. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 22, 2022
The Pale Blue Eye begins to double as a stiff but fanciful origin story for both Edgar Allen Poe and also the detective genre he would later help shape. The best stretches of Cooper’s thin and unhurried script find the film checking those two boxes at the same time, as its occult fascination enriches its all-too-human crimes (and vice-versa) until the border that separates this world from the next becomes as blurry as that which runs between reason and madness. Read full review
56
Paste MagazineAurora AmidonJan 9, 2023
It’s a sluggishly slow murder-mystery without much tension, one holding a candle to Poe’s work Nevermore. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonJan 12, 2023
The gothic sense of unease that informs the early stages of The Pale Blue Eye gives way to hysteria—not the kind that Poe used to underlie his various narrators’ incipient madness, but just a horse-drawn trip to Crazy Town. Read full review
50
Screen RantFerdosa AbdiJan 6, 2023
Ultimately, The Pale Blue Eye feels like more of a missed opportunity than a story worth enjoying on its own. As far as historical fiction goes, the film fails to capitalize on its central historical figure, especially with Melling’s performance a beacon of light. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsJan 6, 2023
The Pale Blue Eye is heavy, and not always to its advantage. Its glumness, meant to come off as a good-looking take on American gothic, gets in the way of its juicier, freakier bits. The offense is that it does so in service of a mystery that barely matters. Read full review
50
ABC NewsPeter TraversJan 6, 2023
Christian Bale tries to solve a murder at West Point, circa 1830, with the help of young cadet Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling). But what should be a gothic mesmerizer ends up a dreary exercise to doom and gloom that’s an endurance test for audiences. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussJan 3, 2023
While pacing and believability issues in The Pale Blue Eye cannot be overlooked, this finely made period mystery’s virtues should still be savored. Read full review
50
The Film StageJordan RaupDec 23, 2022
If The Pale Blue Eye dances around potentially intriguing ideas––the dehumanization of being in the military and who ultimately answers for the crimes carried out in the name of religion––it’s all window dressing for what is ultimately a murder mystery lacking momentum. Read full review
50
The Irish TimesTara BradyDec 22, 2022
The Pale Blue Eye is beautifully shot and absurdly plotted. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisDec 22, 2022
Continuing his fascination with tormented manhood, Cooper, in this third collaboration with Bale after “Out of the Furnace” (2013) and “Hostiles” (2017), works with a solemnity that stifles the fun. Read full review
50
Little White LiesAnton BitelDec 22, 2022
The Pale Blue Eye is all at once a melancholic romance, a revenger’s tragedy, and an intriguing mystery. Its one problem, though, is that it comes with a glacial pace to match its wintry setting. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyDec 22, 2022
This third collaboration between writer-director Scott Cooper and Christian Bale (following Out of the Furnace and Hostiles) is far stronger on gothic atmosphere than suspense. It’s capably acted and visually effective, with lots of mist-shrouded woodlands and chiaroscuro interiors, but the storytelling is stilted and uninvolving. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubCourtney HowardDec 22, 2022
This is a case of one movie with two endings, and neither of them totally satisfy. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 5, 2023
While the picture looks wonderfully atmospheric throughout, with its frostbitten monochromes and consumptive colour palette, the story disintegrates into a lurid and rather silly final act. Read full review
40
EmpireDan JolinDec 22, 2022
A handsome murder mystery with a neat literary twist and an impressive turn from Harry Melling, but which is overcast by the gloominess of its protagonist and the implausibility of its revelations. Read full review
40
VarietyOwen GleibermanDec 22, 2022
The Pale Blue Eye wants to get into the 19th-century darkness, but it’s suffocatingly somber and static. The film showcases its two investigators in an ostensibly enigmatic dance-of-the-seven-frontier-high-collars way, but for much of the movie we’re a step ahead of them. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 22, 2022
One of Howard Shore’s routinely excellent moody scores helps our wend through the wilderness. But the irony, for a would-be-macabre mystery about hearts being ripped out, is a flatlined pulse and a puzzling absence of red meat. Read full review
40
Screen DailyNikki BaughanDec 22, 2022
Rather than lean into the increasingly gothic elements of this spiralling yarn (which reach a fever pitch worthy of Poe’s own work) the film takes itself far too seriously as a character study of a tortured man. Read full review
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