For any filmmaker contemplating their own YA franchise, Chaos Walking is an instructive anti-manual. For the rest of us, it's just noise.

| Apr 22, 2021

It lacks heft, or interest. Absolutely bone-numbingly dull and stupid.

| Apr 6, 2021

This device, of course, worked on paper, in the source novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. But it's appalling on film.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 2, 2021

A semi-competent sci-fi yarn that suffers, if anything, from being too simple in its execution.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 2, 2021

Holland and Ridley have all the rapport of two tree trunks, and the deeper dramatic and comedic possibilities of the one-way torrent of intimate thoughts between them goes bafflingly unexplored.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2021

A disappointment. A premise with much promise has been turned into a bland retread through YA's most familiar faults - despite some bold efforts from Holland, Ridley and Mikkelsen.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 18, 2021

In our current age of preprocessed film spectacle, there is something strangely pleasing-exciting even-about how profoundly unkempt this all feels, especially for a film on this scale.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2021

A hot mess that throws a wet blanket of dystopian drivel over fresh young stars Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland. 'Chaos Limping' is more like it.

| Mar 12, 2021

There's something worth exploring here, but the story is stuck in the gestating process.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 11, 2021

A narrative mess that coasts on its fascinating core concept and the power of Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley's screen presence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 11, 2021

It's got a major director, a major cast, it's based on a major, award-winning book trilogy, and it's just a major disaster.

| Mar 10, 2021

[It's] hard to imagine a more forgettable piece of sci-fi hooey than Chaos Walking.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 7, 2021

It all adds up to a lot of noise that's best to just tune out.

| Original Score: D- | Mar 6, 2021

In another world, Chaos Walking has Jupiter Ascending potential, wherein it's weird enough to be fascinating. Alas, it's just a snooze.

| Mar 6, 2021

"Chaos Walking" has no time for any thoughts that might complicate its ultra-bland hero's journey.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 6, 2021

Chaos Walking has some things going for it, notably the ramifications of the Noise, and Todd and Viola's uncovering of the secrets of Prentisstown and New World.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2021

Has the kind of premise that great sci-fi movies are made out of, and that lesser sci-fi movies waste in the service of generic action.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 5, 2021

You keep hoping a giant thought bubble will fly out of the bushes and whack someone over the head.

| Mar 5, 2021

But once you're immersed, it's a powerful experience that lingers in the mind long after the film's many disappointments have started to fade.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 5, 2021

Chaos Lumbering would be more fitting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 4, 2021