Critic Reviews

J.K. Simmons does not speak a word in I’m Not Here, but his performance is eloquent, anguished, and moving.

What a magnificent presence is J.K. Simmons. What an authentic, weathered, world-weary face he has. What a tremendous gift he has for conveying so much with such little dialogue in the stark and unsettling I’m Not Here.

Throughout, J.K. Simmons invents the film with a primordial physicality of loneliness and self-loathing.

I’m Not Here is never more than a short, morose melodrama whose chief shortcoming is that there’s not more that’s new, that there’s not more “here” here.

Following a few years after "3 Geezers," Schumacher's reviled feature directing debut starring Simmons and Tim Allen, I'm Not Here represents a great leap forward, but still doesn't hold out much promise for future efforts that aren't built around performances by Simmons.

A dour drama that lacks depth despite all its good intentions.

While the film aspires to a clipped complexity, it comes across as gimmicky and amateurish — a chain of miseries passed off as tough truths.

Simmons silently mopes and boozes with conviction, but everyone with dialogue comes off like planks of plywood, thanks to the flat, one-dimensional screenplay by the director and her writing partner, Tony Cummings. You wait for some revelation that might make you feel you haven’t spent these 81 minutes in vain. It’s no use. By the ambiguous ending, like Steve’s answerphone, you’re not here. You left a long time ago.

There isn’t a moment of I’m Not Here that didn’t have me fervently wishing I wasn’t here.