Critic Reviews
50
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
3(25%)
mixed
8(67%)
negative
1(8%)
Showing 12 Critic Reviews
75
Watching Lifeforce now is to be reminded that even big-budget films were once allowed to be adventurous and idiosyncratic, even in the 1980s, and that American horror movies were once capable of being fun, sexy, and subversively empathetic.
75
In film circles there's a name for pictures like Lifeforce. Film Comment magazine has dubbed them guilty pleasures, movies you're embarrassed to admit you like. Maybe somebody spiked my popcorn, but I can't deny that I liked Lifeforce.
75
It has everything a growing horror freak needs: extreme violence, tons of nudity, vampires, mummies, and apocalyptic bedlam. The movie is slyer and smarter than people give it credit for, and absolutely gorgeous-looking.
60
Lifeforce is a near-impossible film to review, at once indescribably awful and hugely, brilliantly entertaining.
50
Pic [from the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson] descends into subpar Agatha Christie territory.
50
Director Tobe Hooper seriously overplays his hand, losing the shape of this 1985 film in a barrage of overblown special effects and screaming Dolby stereo.
50
Silly, moronically entertaining horror film. [25 June 1985]
50
Although we see many strange things happen (and some of them are seen through wondrous-looking special effects), we never have a clue as to what's really going on, and why. [24 June 1985, p.B6]
40
As a piece of extraterrestrial-tinged whimsy, Lifeforce occasionally shows weak signs of life, but in the end it falls well short of achieving classic status.
40
Lifeforce shows off Mr. Hooper's way with a whirling mass of protoplasm, just as Poltergeist did. But its style is shrill and fragmented enough to turn Lifeforce into hysterical vampire porn.
