It's great fun, and the ending makes gleeful hash of pretentious, "metaphysical" science fiction.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 23, 2024

Witty, profound and cleverly scored by its producer/director John Carpenter.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 13, 2024

Careers were launched with this student film-turned-sci-fi cult classic, blasting the genre into hyperspace (almost literally!) without actually being an especially good or interesting flick.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 8, 2024

[Dark Star] can be praised for imagination and effort, if not for results... The story is mostly turgid, the acting is nothing special, and the waits between the bright spots seem interminable.

| Oct 12, 2023

Dark Star is a student film with a studio release and it's exactly what you expect from that. Some of Carpenter's early promise is on display but whatever impressed in 1974 has mostly faded with time and age.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 10, 2022

Dark Star is well worth 83 minutes of anyone’s time: perhaps the most enjoyable piece of anarchy since the Marx Brothers.

| Jul 22, 2022

...a must-watch for anyone who dug Star Wars, Alien, Halloween or The Thing...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2021

If it weren't for the extremely primitive special effects and set designs (though decent considering the budget), the picture might have succeeded as outright horror.

| Original Score: 2/10 | Aug 29, 2020

All good fun, without much substance or lasting power.

| Dec 9, 2019

An enjoyable lightweight outer-space hippie spoof.

| Original Score: B | Nov 15, 2010

... a grungy, darkly humorous declaration that, in the end, boredom and human slovenliness trumps technology and high ideals.

| Nov 4, 2010

It wouldn't be a cult classic if everybody liked it, now would it?

| Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 26, 2010

John Carpenter's guerilla undermining of the pomposity of space odysseys

| Jun 21, 2010

Hats off nonetheless to young whippersnapper John Carpenter, whose studenty tale of space tedium, aliens and molasses-black humour remains approximately a thousand times better than the director's last 15 years.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 6, 2007

Uneven but enjoyable.

| Jun 6, 2007

By introducing human eccentricities into the cold structure of SF, Carpenter creates a vision of the technological future that is both disillusioned and oddly affirmative in its insistence on the unscientific survival of emotional frailty.

| Jun 6, 2007

An intermittently hilarious satire on 2001.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2007

The dim comedy consists of sophomoric notations and mistimed one-liners.

| Jun 6, 2007

Isn't nearly as funny as it once was...but it nonetheless has its amusing moments.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 26, 2007

Conta com idias e momentos interessantes e divertidos, mas a precariedade tcnica acaba comprometendo a experincia.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 24, 2007