There's enough charm and whimsy for the story to escape coming across as too predictable... The Sunlit Night is a light and occasionally messy story of discovery, and Slate's performance anchors it all.

| Aug 4, 2020

The Sunlit Night is a ponderous, pretentious dud

| Jul 24, 2020

I can easily imagine people who wouldn't like it, but there is something beautiful about how perfectly it locates a feeling of confusion, ambivalence and grief.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 23, 2020

The Sunlit Night feels somewhat incomplete, less a full-blown oil painting than a sketch skimmed over with a veil of watercolor. But Slate's vibrance shines right through no matter what.

| Jul 20, 2020

Slate holds her own and shows glimpses at the story of artistic and personal awakening that "The Sunlit Night" could have been. But mostly it's trapped in the dark.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 18, 2020

It feels like it's been cobbled together from pieces of other, better movies.

| Jul 18, 2020

What remains on the screen is gorgeously photographed, well-acted and a little more thoughtful than one might expect.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 17, 2020

Despite Slate's capable performance, the movie is only postcard-friendly, not an artistic awakening.

| Jul 16, 2020

Taken as a whole, "The Sunlit Night" is fey and inconclusive, and whether something of more substance got cut in the post-Sundance re-edit or was never there to begin with is at this point moot.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 16, 2020

Director of photography Martin Ahlgren deserves a lot of credit for making this film palatable as the plot meanders on a road to nowhere.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 16, 2020

Unfortunately, everything engaging about the narrative is overshadowed by gratuitous quirkiness.

| Original Score: C | Jul 15, 2020

The Sunlit Night has a few too many forced moments and scripted relationship beats to feel genuine.

| Feb 5, 2019

Even the most clearly emotional scenes are undone by the outlandish surroundings.

| Original Score: C | Jan 28, 2019

"The Sunlit Night"... resembles the second half of Alexander Payne's "Downsizing," which proved that a similarly end-of-the-earth locale doesn't make dull characters any more exotic or exciting.

| Jan 27, 2019

Slate gives her best to an underdeveloped role that was likely deeper in the novel by Rebecca Dinerstein, who makes her screenwriting debut with this adaptation.

| Jan 27, 2019