Eyes Wide Shut Critic Reviews

A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them.Read the full review

Above all a masterpiece of sustained tone, a tightrope act that pays off in rich and unexpected ways.Read the full review

A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.Read the full review

Kubrick left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph.Read the full review

The reconciliation at the end of the film is the one scene that doesn't work; a film that intrigues us because of its loose ends shouldn't try to tidy up.Read the full review

In terms of power and effect, Eyes Wide Shut approaches (but does not surpass) Kubrick's vintage work - it is thought-provoking and unsettling.Read the full review

Makes its strongest impression not with dialogue but with virtuoso visual work…. when you work with Kubrick, it's always the director, never the actors, who is the real star. That can lead a film up or down or, as it does here, in both directions at the same time. [16 July 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]Read the full review

It's painstakingly paced, but it's also entrancing.Read the full review

Totally absorbing even when it, too, strays.Read the full review