The film is... a very effective fable.

| May 2, 2025

Something strange is going on in the town of Stepford... And something strange is going on in the movie business, too, when a second-class thriller like The Stepford Wives can parade itself as the natural successor to Rosemary's Baby.

| May 2, 2025

Director Bryan Forbes photographs the victims of Stepford in the most romantic way.

| May 2, 2025

Director Bryan Forbes and screenwriter William Goldman have given not only substance but also a stunningly possible shocker ending to Ira Levin's unsatisfying novel.

| May 2, 2025

William Goldman's screenplay is a major disappointment.

| May 2, 2025

"The Stepford Wives" allows only tendrils of eeriness to disrupt the bland normalcy of its facade.

| May 2, 2025

The filmmakers have padded the plot somewhat, succeeding only in making the experience even more tedious.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 2, 2025

For more than an hour, the horror fails to materialize, and the satire of exurbia putts along on one clogged cylinder.

| May 2, 2025

Its characterisation is mostly dull, and visually it is uneventful, to say the least.

| May 2, 2025

It emerges as a subtly chilling suspense tale.

| May 2, 2025

The idea has potential for satire which is not realized at all. Director Bryan Forbes hasn't brought out the the humorous possibilities. So it must stand as a horror movie, and it is disappointing in that respect, also.

| May 2, 2025

It is a loose little thriller that works despite itself.

| May 2, 2025

After limping along for three-quarters of the picture, director Bryan Forbes desperately endeavoring to build suspense without ever quite engaging the spectator's emotions, the action plunges headlong into the realm of sci-fi fantasy and disaster.

| May 2, 2025

It is Miss Ross's mentally tortured loner that helps give it credibility.

| May 2, 2025

Forbes directs this malarky with a striking feeling for light and space, and for what you might call the aesthetics of suburbia.

| May 2, 2025

"The Stepford Wives" is mindless junk pretending it has a mind.

| May 2, 2025

Bryan Forbes' movie may raise some questions if you'd let it, but it offers no answers, not even about itself.

| May 2, 2025

The satirical aspect of the science fiction gimmick can taken only so far, but to argue it out fully would give away too much of this brightly photographed film.

| May 2, 2025

It's too talky. Although it runs nearly two hours, someone seems to have written nearly four hours of dialog for it.

| May 2, 2025

Katharine Ross's Joanna is a truly impassioned performance.

| May 2, 2025