Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Spackling over any copycat cracks with strong acting and fleet editing, "Lights Out" delivers minimalist frights in old-school ways.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
A small, pitch-black treat, "Lights Out" takes a common childhood terror and uses it to spin a horror story with a new kind of ghost and some familiar, but still effective shocks.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Like the most enjoyable horror movies, Lights Out is almost a physical experience, carrying viewers from stress and terror to even some tension-breaking hilarity.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Bello is an excellent actress and makes Sophie's anguish credible, although she can't rise above the material.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : TheWrap
Occasionally succumbs to certain rudimentary hallmarks of industrial studio horror, but for the most part it's agreeably suspenseful, date-night arm-squeezing genre fare.

Name : April Wolfe / Alias : Village Voice
Lights Out needs to be seen in a darkened theater next to someone who won't judge you for jumping out of your seat.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Awfully inept .

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
A terrifically effective little scarefest.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The fun wears out fast and so does the "gotcha" factor.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Once the film runs out of unusual lighting schemes to exploit (violet-hued goth black lighting, random blasts of car headlights, etc.), it loses power faster than a millennial with a long-overdue electric bill. But that one shadow lady is enough.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Tribune News Service
Built on a clever premise, the film is executed seamlessly. It's the best expression of a low-budget horror flick: resourceful and smart, where the most charismatic character is the ghoul itself.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
"Lights Out" is an effective, tidy little chiller; basically the same sneak-up-in-the-dark scare over and over. But hey, as we've learned through decades of horror movies, that stuff works.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The tale of a restless evil spirit who suffers from an extreme aversion to light, this nifty little chiller may be the first movie of its kind to unite the pleasure of a good haunting with the horror of an unpaid electricity bill.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Unfortunately, the film stumbles, offering too few legitimate scares and displaying an overreliance on traditional horror movie cliches.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
The film is blatantly, unmistakably about mental illness, and that makes it hard to ignore or forgive what it ends up saying (hopefully by accident) on the subject.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
The scares are cheap, but they're frequently effective, the same way that if you're hungry junk food might fill you up. It doesn't mean you'll feel good about it later.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
There are a few inconsistencies with the scary bits, but the script is rich, and having Teresa Palmer as a badass adult daughter with commitment issues - typically a male role - is refreshing.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Sandberg . spares us from the indignity of jump scares. When he sets out to frighten you, he means it.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg makes an impressive feature debut with this spooky, less-is-more expansion of his short that landed him this first Hollywood gig.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
At 81 minutes, unfolding in a handful of key locations, and opting for practical effects and clever framing over computer-generated imagery, Lights Out is still lean and concentrated, and it benefits from that spareness.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Palmer and Bello really do seem like world-weary, spook-addled daughter and mother, and they play the stakes just so, favoring neither blase understatement nor yellow-highlighter melodrama.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
A brisk, studio-glossy feature that's predictable and heavily reliant on jump scares but spooky good fun nonetheless.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Never strays too far from its source, essentially repeating the same jump scare, over and over again, for most of its muscular 80 minute running time. What's most shocking is how well it still works.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
In the end, it's just a little horror movie, but the director knows that and doesn't overplay his hand.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
In some ways the film is like an amusement park ride. You see the curves and twists coming, but if you're going fast enough, they're scary anyway.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects and actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Lights Out" deserves to be considered in the company of such recent horror standouts as "It Follows," "The Babadook," "Goodnight Mommy" and "The Witch."

Name : Peter Sobczynski / Alias : RogerEbert.com
For the most part, though, the film is just a tired tread through the usual elements.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Even the most cynical, jaded, seen-it-all-before critic cannot deny certain visceral reactions to a film. Lights Out gave me the chills.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A nifty fright flick with glimmers of depth. Short and effective.

Name : Edward Douglas / Alias : New York Daily News
Unsettling enough to make you think twice about what might be in the room with you when the lights go out.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A surprisingly maternal horror movie that relies as much on fraying emotional bonds as supernatural suspense to create tension.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
From a purely narrative perspective, there's nothing new here but like a new arrangement of a familiar tune, the slight changes make it fresh and enjoyable.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
It's got a dry dusty power, and a dark sense of humor. And when it finally saddles up and really rides, pardner, you'd best get out of its way.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
We don't live in an era of white hats and black hats. Maybe we never did. Today, everyone is gray - or, in Mackenzie's color scheme, faded blue and sad beige

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Texas is as much a riveting character in [this] fascinating crime drama as the brothers turned bank robbers at its heart or the laconic lawman who coolly follows them across the sun-hardened landscape like a hunter on the trail of his next kill.

Name : Walter V. Addiego / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Despite the weighty issues at play, there's much about the movie to simply enjoy - the camaraderie of the brothers and the lawmen, and the not infrequent elements of humor.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
When the final showdown arrives, the men are redefined by their deeds and what began as a sharp genre piece deepens into a subtle character study.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Hot damn, this one's a goodie - a mesmerizing, modern-day western that moves with the coiled intensity of a rattlesnake ready to spring.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's not every day that we see a movie that's fresh, exciting and dangerous, slapping you from explosive laughter to stunned attention. Mood and atmosphere and interesting character acting are rarely handled as well as this.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Audiences have been down this dusty backroad before. The thrill of High Of High Water is in its skillful, offbeat execution.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Tribune News Service
A dusty, blood-soaked myth of crime and punishment far from fantasy, a finger planted on the pulse - and the trigger.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Hell or High Water is a rare humanist Western: Finality is the true villain.

Name : Peter Sobczynski / Alias : RogerEbert.com
It's frustrating that Hell or High Water contains so many good things that just don't coalesce into a fully satisfying moviegoing experience.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
You could freeze nearly any frame of Hell or High Water and you'd be looking at a work of art. It's stark and breathtaking and gorgeous to behold.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : TheWrap
Feels old-fashioned in its action-thriller gratification and in-the-moment about everything else.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
In this bleak West Texas landscape where everyone seems to be struggling, you find yourself rooting, inexplicably, for all of them against a clear villain: the faceless, predatory bank.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Hell or High Water is set up like a cops and robbers drama, but it plays out like a complicated western - no black-hats-and-white-hats simplicity here. It's all moral shades of grey.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
You might have to go back to 1967's Bonnie and Clyde to find a film about bank robbers that feels as of its time as David Mackenzie's Hell or High Water.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Hell or High Water is a genre film that transcends genre, an iconic American tale that is nonetheless firmly grounded in both place and time. One of the best movies of the year.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
All of the performers in this film, right down to the bit players, are quite good, but Bridges demonstrates yet again that he is one of the finest actors in America.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
"Hell or High Water" is a story about men, but the movie is really about a mindset, a way of life, the strength and resolution required to make a living in a world that doesn't care about you.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
Sheridan's script - filled with quotable zingers, telling character details, and topical anger - comes to vivid, exciting life with that cast, in particular Bridges, who seems to have finally found another gruff, down-home type worthy of his talents.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
In a word, "Hell or High Water" is terrific.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
You've seen it all before - but hell, it's worth seeing again.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A soulful outlaw tale with a socioeconomic perspective and a rich sense of place.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
They don't make them like this anymore - but they still can, and here's the proof.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The action is as schematic and artificial as a chess game, and the characters have as much identity as its pieces.

Name : Mara Reinstein / Alias : Us Weekly
The tension and anger in this neo-Western practically radiate off the screen.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Scenic, well-paced and rich in dialogue and character, the film is Coen brothers for the squares, and maybe the best middle-of-the-seat drama of the summer.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Hell or High Water is at once a tale of desperation in hard times, and a keenly observed character study - or studies.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heartbreaking.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Much more than a genre piece, "Hell or High Water" takes you places that you thought the big screen had forgotten.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
"Hell or High Water" is a thrillingly good movie - a crackerjack drama of crime, fear, and brotherly love set in a sun-roasted, deceptively sleepy West Texas that feels completely exotic for being so authentic.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"Hell or High Water" has one foot in pulp conventions, and the other in some stimulating, morally tricky contemporary answers to those conventions. What the movie has, above all, is a dramatic line, clean and straight.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
The cast is uniformly magnificent, but it's Pine who steals the movie.

Name : Glenn Whipp / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Hell or High Water" is a gripping heist drama keenly attuned to the outsider politics of our times.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Hell or High Water isn't just a great time at the movies, it's one of the year's best pictures.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
"Hell or High Water" overcomes its vapid political leanings with loads of West Texas atmosphere, smart dialogue and acutely observed relationships.

Name : Danny King / Alias : Village Voice
Hell or High Water's deliberate pacing gives it the feel of a heist story with its feet stuck in mud - and that's a good thing.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
If there's such a thing as an easygoing thriller, then "Hell or High Water" is it. The stakes may be steep, but the characters can seem more nonchalant than nervous.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Let's make it easy: If you like sitting in a dark room looking at pictures that move, you should see "Hell or High Water." It's terrific.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A film with the sort of sweeping grandeur that today's filmmakers rarely aspire to, let alone fulfill.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
The plot is clever, and its intricacies are beautifully worked out.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Hell Or High Water plays out in unexpected ways, culminating in a tense final showdown that's somehow simultaneously an epilogue, the story having already concluded. (Neat trick, that.)

Name : Chris Klimek / Alias : NPR
The 101 minutes that follow essentially comprise a feature-length Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen song, their brilliance lying in the details.