Critic Reviews

Unpredictability isn't this horror film's strength, but it's stylishly crafted and excellently acted, and it boasts an abundance of heart in every sense of the word.

This compelling psychological horror-thriller contains a tremendous amount of heart. That would be largely thanks to a moving and deeply sensitive lead performance by Jim Sturgess

There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes.

With erratic success, Heartless tries a number of different veins-urban fairy tale with "There was no magic, it was you all along" twist, supernatural family drama-but it's on firmest footing as a macabre comedy.

Storywise, Heartless is a bit of a jumble, especially in its last third. But it's got a distinct tone, contrasting romance and even outright sentimentality with urban dread and a few nasty visuals.

Heartless gets progressively better as it goes along, and benefits from a poignant late cameo from Timothy Spall as Sturgess' beloved father, but it never recovers from a dull first hour.

A supernatural take on "Death Wish" meets "Faust," Heartless is an uneasy mixture of B-movie shocks, social commentary and sentimentality that shows a potent imagination at work.

Effective jump-shocks and a strong turn from Eddie Marsan mask an over-complicated last act.

Best appreciated for its sustained creepy vibe and sporadically arresting images, Heartless moves from one outré moment to another, from one self-conscious allusion to the next ("Donnie Darko" and "Taxi Driver"). It doesn't go anywhere special or much of anywhere, though it goes there in appreciably icky style.

Heartless seems eternally at war with its own genre, unwilling to succumb to bloody mayhem yet neither smart nor coherent enough to transcend horror convention.