It is a big, silly barrel of fun, with a delirious, tongue-in-cheek script...

| Feb 2, 2024

The film was was responding to the start of the US rust belt and Reagan-era consumerism, but its themes of working-class subjugation and omnipresent media control have only become more pressing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 25, 2018

Carpenter's primary objective was to make a tough action flick, which he does; it fits snugly into his filmography's subset of urban mayhem movies (alongside 'Escape from New York,' 'Assault on Precinct 13,' and parts of 'Big Trouble in Little China').

| Feb 17, 2017

Behold the message as articulated by John Carpenter's sublime sci-fi opus: "I'm giving you a choice: Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trashcan."

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 1, 2013

As a movie, They Live is lethargic. As election propaganda, it's terrific.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 6, 2013

John Carpenter's They Live has cult favorite written all over it, and part of the reason is the way it regenerates the cheap, juicy, surprisingly potent sci-fi of the 1950s.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2013

They Live is the looniest movie of the season and also one of the most engaging.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 10, 2012

The joke is in the material; the idea itself is funny and daring. And some time soon, They Live suggests, with grim, knowing wink, the joke may be on us.

| Oct 10, 2012

A fantastically subversive film, a nifty little confection pitting us vs them, the haves vs the have-nots.

| Jun 4, 2007

All in all, an entertaining (if ideologically incoherent) response to the valorization of greed in our midst.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 4, 2007

The black-and-white visuals disturb for only so long, and while themes of indoctrination and conspiracy prove initially intriguing, the film quickly descends into fistfights and gunfire.

| Jun 24, 2006

The loopiest, and coolest, entry in the director's canon.

| May 4, 2005

Credibility isn't the problem with John Carpenter's They Live... but execution is.

Full Review | May 20, 2003

The plot for They Live is full of black holes, the acting is wretched, the effects are second-rate.

| Jan 1, 2000