The Assessment is a movie based on what someone thinks children are like but has absolutely zero experience with children.

| Original Score: C | Apr 24, 2025

The Assessment is an emotionally somber but visually stylish drama that shows a post-apocalyptic society where people have to pass a government evaluation test for approval to become parents. The principal cast members give memorable performances.

| Apr 13, 2025

Alicia Vikander steals the show in Fleur Fortuné's promising directorial debut.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 11, 2025

The Assessment's expository world-building is genius but the character development and story structure leave more questions than answers.

| Apr 8, 2025

From the score to the performances to the cinematography, script, and direction, The Assessment is a singular work I won’t soon forget and Fortuné crafts some imagery here unlike anything that has come before in cinema.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 7, 2025

I applaud the ambition of the film and some of the attempts to shock the audience, but it is not as fully realized to work as a satire, allegory, or indictment despite wanting to be all three.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 7, 2025

“The Assessment” is not entirely unpredictable, but it is absorbing for most of its runtime, and it is refreshing to have a dystopian tale that does not require a plethora of special effects.

| Apr 7, 2025

Vikander, whose still astounding work in the modern sci-fi classic Ex Machina feels most relevant to some of what she is doing here, is a menace in the best possible sense with layers upon layers to her performance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 4, 2025

The Assessment doesn’t have the heft to fully maximize the potential of its premise, its entertaining eccentricities dulled by its disappointing shallowness.

| Apr 3, 2025

Chilling because it's both outlandish and alarmingly grounded and plausible, this sci-fi drama is likely to be scrutinized in your own dome long after the credits roll.

| Mar 26, 2025

It is the show-stealing performance of Alicia Vikander that brings everything together. Watching her run the gamut of emotions till finally uncovering the reality of what price she paid to be an assessor is brilliant, brutal and beautiful.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Mar 25, 2025

The film is at times absurd, other times hilarious, and often just plain bleak. It also features a scene-stealing scorched earth monologue from Minnie Driver that is among the best work she has ever done.

| Mar 25, 2025

Vikander is the secret weapon here... and as Virginia toggles between android-like government agent and guileless woman-child, Vikander becomes the film’s unstable nucleus, just as a baby becomes the center of a new family’s cyclone.

| Mar 24, 2025

Vikander, perhaps recognizing how tantalizingly different this type of role is for her, turns Virginia into an unsettling tour de force of disciplined abandon.

| Mar 24, 2025

A provocative and sometimes squirm-inducingly funny sci-fi that gives its three leads lots of juicy material to chew on, with Vikander, in particular, turning her Virginia into a compellingly inscrutable, but not entirely unsympathetic, antagonist.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2025

Fortune’s film is a devilish one, flirting with post-apocalyptic science fiction without ever feeling too out of this world.

| Mar 24, 2025

As "The Assessment" transpires, the intentional absurdity becomes unintentionally funny for all the wrong reasons.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 22, 2025

With a bleak, dystopian world and a couple longing for a child at its core, there’s desperation at the outset, plus a tragedy waiting as it progresses. The Assessment crafts a searing, odd, and engrossing movie about life, living, and control.

| Mar 22, 2025

Certainly, a somewhat solid ending helps but really provides too little, too late to change the final assessment here

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2025

The Assessment is slow-burn, high-yield speculative fiction of the best kind. It also really, genuinely doesn’t feel like it will remain speculation for too much longer.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 21, 2025