Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: It's an oneiric hymn to destruction, an Armageddon anthem - a movie to see, if at all, under the influence. Read more
Justin Chang, Variety: Ryan Gosling makes an altogether inauspicious debut with this risible slab of Detroit gothic. Read more
A.A. Dowd, AV Club: The film proves that Gosling has refined taste in movies, and that he's a quick study, but not that he has much to say as an artist. Not yet, anyway. Read more
Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Everything ... is painfully obvious or patently nonsensical. Read more
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: Ryan Gosling is a tremendously talented actor, but he should really leave the storytelling to someone else. Read more
Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: Ryan Gosling wanted to make an art film and, despite some dull patches, pretty much succeeded. Read more
Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: A visual and aural sensory bath that shows some real flair but feels madly derivative at every moment. Read more
Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: "Lost River" is indeed a mess, but it's the best mess possible, an evocative grab-bag of images and moods with a heartfelt sincerity and conflicting impulses of romantic melancholy and hardscrabble hopefulness. Read more
Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: At heart, "Lost River" is a midnight movie for those ready to find it and go with the flow. Read more
Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times: The movie owes a sizable debt to David Lynch and to Nicolas Winding Refn, who directed Mr. Gosling in "Drive" and "Only God Forgives," but it reveals Mr. Gosling as a filmmaker with a poetic sensibility of his own. Read more
Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail: Indulgent and movie-like, Lost River is Gosling's weird, let's-do-this-thing folly. If it is a statement, it is one made by borrowing the vivid styles of the actual filmmakers he seems to admire ... Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Designed to daze and confuse, and succeeding, Ryan Gosling's directorial debut is a stunner in visual terms alone. Read more