Critic Reviews

Equals is composed of small, sensual moments which build to a climax that feels both gut-wrenching and potently universal, like an old torch song to which you already know all the words.

All told, Equals is a feast for the eye that leaves you with a troubling contemplation of the future.

If you can get past the witlessness of the world itself, there is some very good work in Equals, and fans of the cast will be no doubt pleased with the connection they have in some of the movie's best moments.

Equals brings Stewart’s charisma back to a genre framework — though its form of low-key science fiction is no longer the kind of genre material that actually gets wide exposure.

Director Drake Doremus carefully constructs an us-against-the-world romance for Silas and Nia (an idea he pulled off beautifully in the underrated 2011 drama "Like Crazy," starring Felicity Jones and the late Anton Yelchin) and provides them with a rogue band of fellow thought rebels, including Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver.

Equals is really about possibility in a world gone cold from insisting that things can't change. Sound like any place you know?

Doremus can’t quite make the emotional breakthroughs rewarding enough to justify the slow buildup, but the icy beauty of the film makes it worth watching.

Equals goes for the Vulcan solution, and while the movie feels a bit thin and padded as a feature, it believes in itself completely, and there are moments when the sincerity of the lead actors and the director's addiction to the narcotics of Kristen Stewart's eyes, lips, neck and hands puts the whole concept over the top.

It’s all a little slow and stoic and familiar.

For high-concept melodrama that's low on complexity, this very solemn film takes itself way too seriously. But it's not entirely without interest, thanks to sleek visuals and decent chemistry between alluring leads Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart.