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

The first feature from [Fleur Fortuné] has a ton of style, and signals from the beginning her confident use of framing, texture and color.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 21, 2025

Prioritizing aesthetics over narrative, the film offers only superficial hints of a society riven by class and authoritarian politics.

| Mar 21, 2025

The performances are first-rate, particularly those of Vikander and Olsen, waging a war of wills — the tension is palpable.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 20, 2025

The Assessment works its way through intriguing conundrums about the motivations and qualifications of parenthood, as well as the power dynamics at play between parents and children.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 17, 2025

It’s also hard to feel much for the movie, which doesn’t just strain the bounds of credibility but obliterates them.

| Oct 15, 2024

So idiosyncratic that it might’ve been even better if it had dropped its genre trappings entirely. But removing that dystopian future could deprive Fortuné of such a convincing showcase for him as a clearly gifted visual stylist.

| Sep 13, 2024

Unfortunately, this thoughtful sci-fi thriller becomes predictable and convoluted long before the couple’s seven-day evaluation is complete... The picture has been worked out on a visual level, but the script never explores those deeper themes.

| Sep 11, 2024

The Assessment smartly taps into and maintains its focus on the near universal anxiety about parenting in a world made increasingly uninhabitable by overconsumption and climate change. But the film loses its way when it widens its scope...

| Sep 10, 2024

A compelling genre thriller that manages to build a world that feels both genuinely new and depressingly realistic if human society goes too far down the wrong path.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 10, 2024

A speculative and futurist contrivance that’s elegant, amusing, discomfiting and just the right side of preposterous. It’s an absurdist psychodrama of planned parenthood which mixes Brave New World with a little bit of Abigail’s Party.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2024