[Sweet Virginia] is a high-quality physical and psychological thriller.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2017

A lot to take in - too much, really.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 1, 2017

Director Dagg and sibling screenwriters Benjamin and Paul China ratchet up the tension. So does the eerie score by another set of siblings, Will and Brooke Blair, who previously teamed for the horror thriller Green Room.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2017

Cut from the same cloth as the modern-day classic Blue Ruin, Sweet Virginia is a solid genre exercise.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 28, 2017

The cast and creators of "Sweet Virginia" dig underneath flat pulp conventions and find the real pain and emotional instability at their roots.

| Nov 22, 2017

All that said, the movie is well put together, enough so that if you're not entirely tired of its clichs, it might constitute a tolerable entertainment. I'd rather watch Double Indemnity for the 15th time.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 17, 2017

What sets Sweet Virginia above the pack is a leisurely inquiry into the moral rot that seeps into the very bones of lives bent out of shape by disappointment, frustration, loneliness or the absence of love.

| Nov 16, 2017

A twisty, small-town thriller that blooms in the shadows and shies from the light, "Sweet Virginia" marshals a relentlessly threatening mood from dangerous secrets and unpleasant surprises.

| Nov 16, 2017

... the understated, intense performances of [director Jamie] Dagg's cast make this slow burner a standout.

| Nov 16, 2017

Bernthal and DeWitt generate a nice chemistry as lovers who've found each other after abandoning the romantic notions of their youth.

| Nov 14, 2017

Sweet Virginia doesn't have much of a point, as its characters are reductive variables in an inevitable equation of carnage.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 14, 2017

The script is a bit too lacking in creating fleshed-out characters in favor of telling a standard murder for hire story with a villain who never fully connects with the audience.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 13, 2017

This taut drama exists in a timeless noir territory, a world of free-floating dread and dashed hopes where mood supersedes specifics of time and place.

| Oct 27, 2017

Sweet Virginia is riveting even when it feels insubstantial.

| Original Score: B | Oct 20, 2017

Part neo-noir, part latter-day Western, this exceptional indie thriller delivers well-acted character insights amid its shadowy, small-town Alaskan setting.

| Apr 27, 2017

Director Jaime M. Dagg brews an atmosphere of restrained loves and swelling hurt that carries his slow-burn neo-Western with mesmerizing mood and dizzying emotion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2017