There's a mesmerizing clarity to The Sweet Hereafter': you're moved by it, but you never feel the filmmaker is milking your emotions.

| Mar 5, 2018

That's the true power of Egoyan's film - how in shuffling the chronological deck, we see what once was in this town, both in its light and its darkness, and how none of it will ever be the same, no matter what Mitchell Stevens says.

| Dec 15, 2017

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

A delicate and touching story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2002

...Egoyan looks at the essence of guilt and the complexity of human relationships in all their rich variety.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 17, 2001

Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan's most ambitious work to date, The Sweet Hereafter is a rich, complex meditation on the impact of a terrible tragedy on a small town.

| Feb 14, 2001

Though this is Egoyan's first adaptation, The Sweet Hereafter could serve as a model for how to do it right.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 14, 2001

In a season of expertly adapted contemporary fiction (like "L.A. Confidential" and "The Ice Storm"), this fusion of Banks's and Egoyan's sensibilities stands as a particularly inspired mix.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

As in Egoyan's Exotica and The Adjuster, past and present are intricately fused by the crisp editing, the mournful shadings of Mychael Danna's score and Paul Sarossy's austere wide-screen cinematography

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

This is one of the best films of the year, an unflinching lament for the human condition.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

A beautiful elegy about family and community, death and healing...

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Elegiac and yet straightforward as haiku

| Jan 1, 2000

solemn, subtly structured, beautifully acted and ultimately hypnotic

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

a new moral urgency seems to invigorate this film

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Audience is almost bound to be absorbed for the duration.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

It's a tactfully acted film, beautifully shot in snowy widescreen, subtly scripted and directed with a rare touch.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

The film searches for that place in the heart where we feel sadness and squeezes it persuasively.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: A | Nov 20, 1997