In Darkness 2011

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Real life brims with startling atrocities as well as cliches, and this film is full of both. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It is suspenseful, horrifying and at times intensely moving. But the ease with which it elicits these responses from the audience feels more opportunistic than insightful. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: The film's turn toward charcoal-sketch notions of good and evil only fuels a simplistic view of historical tragedy in the worst sort of way. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: In outline, In Darkness is a standard conversion melodrama, but little within those parameters is easy. The darkness lingers into the light. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The suspense here, derived from a true story, is excruciating and inspiring in equal measure. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Based on the true story of Leopold Socha, a Catholic Polish sewer worker who hid a group of Jews over a period of 14 months in the underground tunnels of Lvov. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: While In Darkness sticks to formula, it brings across that formula effectively. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Wieckiewicz is outstanding, his open face expressing a full range of emotions, often within the same scene, sometimes within the same conversation. Is he a good man? Or is he a greedy man moved to do good things? Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The film looks fine, is structured intelligently, measures out the horror in pragmatic amounts. In the end, though, it's that professionalism that gets in the way. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Robert Wieckiewicz is good as the conflicted protagonist, but the most valuable player here is cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska, who turns in handsome work even though most of the action transpires in inky blackness. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Holland and her screenwriter David Shamoon understand that suffering isn't necessarily ennobling and that sometimes goodness emanates from the unlikeliest sources. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: When it's over, you'll be relieved to come up for air. You'll also be glad you took the plunge down under. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The chiseled Furmann gives Mundek a savvy, even moral, brawn. As Paulina, Maria Schrader makes an argument for gentle yet pragmatic maternalism. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Based on a true story, "In Darkness" is obviously tough to watch, especially since Holland's camera is both unforgiving and relentlessly human. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A daringly murky-looking movie that demands viewers enter the void... Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Harrowing, engrossing, claustrophobic and sometimes literally hard to watch... Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: In a world where everyone was looking for an angle, hoping to survive the nightmare and maybe even turn other people's misery into a tidy profit, the fact that a fragile humanity survived at all is little short of a miracle. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: More than half of In Darkness takes place underground, shrouded in rank, oppressive shadows. But the movie also glows bright with life and hope. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: An epic, and no less of one for taking place largely in the claustrophobic confines of a Polish sewer system. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: Honesty is the movie's greatest strength. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: As many Holocaust stories as we've seen, this one still has a fresh and important lesson about heroism - and how it has the habit of springing from some all-too-human places. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Holland is properly unsparing about the casual sadism of the German military, but she resolutely sidesteps the sentimental oppressor-victim division that distorts so much pop-Holocaust narrative today. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Only Wieckiewicz provides some light, in the humanity that gradually shapes Socha's experience. It's a transformation as wrenching to watch as it is vital to remember. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Holland has said that she wanted her harrowing and rewarding epic to run long so it would make viewers feel that they're in the sewers as well. In this, she succeeds. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Holland, shooting in confined spaces with little light, elicits taut performances from a strong cast. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Yet another movie in which Jews escape death in the Holocaust through the actions of a gentile with a conscience. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: One might think that years and years of seeing Holocaust movies would create an immunity, a point at which you can feel no more. But in fact, it works the other way. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film is a morally challenging examination of the vexed Polish Catholic-Jewish relations of the era and a rich portrait of a man moving almost reluctantly toward righteousness. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The setting - a rat-infested sewer lit by flashlights and candles - and the memorable central performance from Robert Wieckiewicz etch themselves on the imagination. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: It positively clamours for your attention. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: In Darkness presents a credible scenario about the effects of desperate times upon the human psyche, and it also shows how base human instinct can nevertheless be elevated. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: With the exception of the group's leader, movie-star handsome Mundek Margulies (German-born, internationally recognized Benno Furmann), the characters are flat as shadows. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Every Holocaust movie, however hair-raising, essentially thrums the same self-sacrifice-versus-self-preservation chord. It's not fair, but there it is: We've been here before. Read more