Despite its good intentions, condemning child abuse and sexual assault, Back Roads has little to offer in the way of sensitive or stirring storytelling.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 16, 2020

Pettyfer's tastes, shortcomings and unflagging belief in himself leave a radioactive glow that comes only from the most reliably engrossing strain of failure...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 6, 2020

All roads lead to unintentional giggles.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 5, 2020

It's not explicitly violent or sexually gratuitous. Just, well, morally creepy.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 5, 2020

The performances are sturdy... and the whole has a sombre determination that makes it likable and rather camp.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 10, 2020

The film runs just over an hour and a half but feels at least twice that long.

| Feb 21, 2020

The effect, in this case, is more audacious than convincing.

| Dec 7, 2018

Ambitious but unrefined, Alex Pettyfer's directorial debut Back Roads is a raw movie overburdened by heavy-handed drama.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 7, 2018

Back Roads may ultimately work better as a book than a movie, but you can't accuse this cast and crew of mailing this movie in.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 6, 2018

This was a big gamble for Pettyfer, who could have just coasted along in big budget films where actions often speak louder than the dialogue. His willingness to take a chance pays off.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 6, 2018

While Back Roads doesn't live up to its considerable dramatic and thematic ambitions, it provides a strong opportunity for its filmmaker/star to stretch his dramatic muscles in the lead role.

| Dec 5, 2018

"Back Roads" is that peculiar kind of disappointment: a wreck about wreckage.

| Dec 5, 2018

This is an accomplished debut from Pettyfer as a director, and it shows how interested he seems to be in the scarier byways of life, which seemed clear in his performance last year in The Strange Ones.

| Apr 21, 2018