Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Composed of multiple layers - more than one of which might bring tears to your eyes - this shape-shifting documentary begins as one thing and ends as quite another.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A scenario with present-day echoes of "The Grapes of Wrath" yields perceptive insights into the way we view outsiders.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The movie might seem like just another liberal do-gooder profile, yet a shocker ending throws new and disturbing light on the situation, amplifying the Christian themes at the heart of the story.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Moss uncovers something greater than a vision of a divided community; he's made a drama as prickly and surprising as any fictional character study.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
[A] tough-minded, admirably unresolved film .

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
Through patience, skill, discretion, and trust, Jesse Moss has taken a seemingly small town story and turned it into both a microcosm of today's most urgent issues and a portrait of a single suffering soul.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It's the rare documentary in which truly unpredictable events unfold and no assumption is safe.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film features stunning third-act revelations that compel viewers to rethink its characters' actions and motivations.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Moss uses images of drill towers or blistering flame as visual metaphors for other things transpiring on screen: the fracturing of a family, the heated fury that comes with a sense of betrayal.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Filmmaker Jesse Moss frames his shots beautifully; the landscapes look like Andrew Wyeth paintings.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Moss was basically a one-man production crew, which explains how he was able to film such intimate, painful conversations. His work is haunting - one of the best documentaries of the year.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
So much of "The Overnighters" tells all sorts of truths, and Moss earned the trust of his subjects, whatever they might think of the result.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A sobering must-see, The Overnighters speaks to the eternal dilemma of doing the right thing in a community beset by suspicion and fear.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A classic example of a documentary that discovers its subject in the process of its making.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
An urgent portrait of compassion under fire.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Overnighters" is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex. There is a clear conflict between the pastor and the town, but there's no good vs. evil.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It develops into a study of obsession, hypocrisy, righteousness and self-doubt, questioning motive and then gob-smacking the audience with the wholly unexpected.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
If John Steinbeck were writing in the second decade of the 21st century, "The Overnighters" is precisely the story he'd want to tell.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
The Overnighters sounds like the sort of dry news blurb you'd skim over in the Sunday paper, but it unfolds into an epic tragedy.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
The movie as a whole is such an incompetent train wreck, you can't look away, just to see how much worse it can get.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Wrongheaded, utterly incompetent, and nearly laugh-free .

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A tortured use of another movie's absurd mythology to help make muddled quasi-satirical points, while indulging the apparently fail-safe punchline of saying the word "purge" about once a minute.