Name : Justin Chang / Alias : NPR
It's a movie that hits every one of its ideological targets, but still winds up missing the mark.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
"Good Kill" is darkly enlightening, but it's not really all that good.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Compelling as the subject may be, its abstract nature would challenge the most skillful of dramatists, and Mr. Niccol's script seldom rises above slogans, argumentation and standard-brand domestic tension.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Good Kill" wants to use the movies as a Trojan horse to confront us with our international sins. It's a worthy effort, even if it's not a very well-built horse.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Niccol's film may not be perfect, but it shines a light on a subject many viewers will know vaguely by name - and not much more.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Psychologically complex and unsettling .

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Thoughtful and immensely gripping .

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
One of the most insightful films about the War on Terror since 9/11.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Good Kill excels as a character study with Niccol's screenplay making Egan a fascinatingly conflicted and flawed individual and Ethan Hawke giving one of his best recent performances bringing the man to life.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Disregard the arguments for and against drone warfare advanced in "Good Kill," and the movie still makes a persuasive case that our blind infatuation with all-powerful technology is stripping us of our humanity.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
We need to have a dialogue about the wages of war in the remote-control era. But it's hard to spark a good dialogue with movies whose dialogue is so bad.

Name : Glenn Whipp / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Where Niccol succeeds is in creating an atmosphere of self-loathing, both for those manning the drones and the audience watching them work.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The bold, confrontational tone commands one's attention, and the cast - which also includes Bruce Greenwood and Zoe Kravitz - is superb.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
It's all far more unsettling than any horror film.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Andrew Niccol takes on the topical issue of drone strikes in a tense war drama notable for its tact and intelligence.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
For the most part, "Good Kill" asks pertinent, enduring questions, not by way of polemic, but through the study of a character whose professionalism and competence are given full respect, even when they're challenged by the mission at hand.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
A sombre, intelligent drama that critiques Obama's ongoing drone policy while still positioning its button-pushing characters as tortured anti-heroes.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Good Kill is well-intentioned, but the topic of joystick combat needs more nuanced treatment than it gets here.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
How long can you push that button before feeling like an assassin? How do you relate to teammates who say that's exactly the right thing to do?

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Will gamers be the drone pilots of tomorrow? Will death lose its sting? Niccol conjectures all over the place. He's doing too much, pushing too hard. Condemn the guy or clone him? You be the judge.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
The picture is quiet, tense, and thoughtful.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
This is repugnant stuff. But, at least in the film, there's no gray area.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Directed and written by Andrew Niccol (whose phenomenal 1997 film Gattaca also starred Hawke), and supposedly "based on actual events," Good Kill raises important questions about the nature of modern warfare, but it is a bit heavy-handed and strained.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Potent enough to make me wish it were less clunky.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The discomfiting premise and a fine performance by Hawke make this somewhat thinly written drama worth seeing.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Hawke is on a roll right now, and "Good Kill" stirs him to another performance of cogency and zeal. Is it sufficient, however, to support an entire movie?

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
But the visuals pack a visceral punch. Every time Tom zeroes in on a target, every time he pushes that button, what we see on those monitors is brutally authentic.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
What Niccol is really interested in . is what this kind of warfare does to the men and women pushing the buttons and adding up the numbers.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Heavy on speeches and light on actual drama.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Good Kill is half-measure, with a redemptive ending that plays as safe and bogus.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Like the most enjoyable horror movies, Lights Out is almost a physical experience, carrying viewers from stress and terror to even some tension-breaking hilarity.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Spackling over any copycat cracks with strong acting and fleet editing, "Lights Out" delivers minimalist frights in old-school ways.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Awfully inept .

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Palmer and Bello really do seem like world-weary, spook-addled daughter and mother, and they play the stakes just so, favoring neither blase understatement nor yellow-highlighter melodrama.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects and actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Never strays too far from its source, essentially repeating the same jump scare, over and over again, for most of its muscular 80 minute running time. What's most shocking is how well it still works.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The tale of a restless evil spirit who suffers from an extreme aversion to light, this nifty little chiller may be the first movie of its kind to unite the pleasure of a good haunting with the horror of an unpaid electricity bill.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg makes an impressive feature debut with this spooky, less-is-more expansion of his short that landed him this first Hollywood gig.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A nifty fright flick with glimmers of depth. Short and effective.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : TheWrap
Occasionally succumbs to certain rudimentary hallmarks of industrial studio horror, but for the most part it's agreeably suspenseful, date-night arm-squeezing genre fare.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Once the film runs out of unusual lighting schemes to exploit (violet-hued goth black lighting, random blasts of car headlights, etc.), it loses power faster than a millennial with a long-overdue electric bill. But that one shadow lady is enough.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A surprisingly maternal horror movie that relies as much on fraying emotional bonds as supernatural suspense to create tension.

Name : April Wolfe / Alias : Village Voice
Lights Out needs to be seen in a darkened theater next to someone who won't judge you for jumping out of your seat.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
A small, pitch-black treat, "Lights Out" takes a common childhood terror and uses it to spin a horror story with a new kind of ghost and some familiar, but still effective shocks.

Name : Peter Sobczynski / Alias : RogerEbert.com
For the most part, though, the film is just a tired tread through the usual elements.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Even the most cynical, jaded, seen-it-all-before critic cannot deny certain visceral reactions to a film. Lights Out gave me the chills.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
At 81 minutes, unfolding in a handful of key locations, and opting for practical effects and clever framing over computer-generated imagery, Lights Out is still lean and concentrated, and it benefits from that spareness.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
"Lights Out" is an effective, tidy little chiller; basically the same sneak-up-in-the-dark scare over and over. But hey, as we've learned through decades of horror movies, that stuff works.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
The film is blatantly, unmistakably about mental illness, and that makes it hard to ignore or forgive what it ends up saying (hopefully by accident) on the subject.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
In the end, it's just a little horror movie, but the director knows that and doesn't overplay his hand.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Unfortunately, the film stumbles, offering too few legitimate scares and displaying an overreliance on traditional horror movie cliches.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Tribune News Service
Built on a clever premise, the film is executed seamlessly. It's the best expression of a low-budget horror flick: resourceful and smart, where the most charismatic character is the ghoul itself.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Bello is an excellent actress and makes Sophie's anguish credible, although she can't rise above the material.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
There are a few inconsistencies with the scary bits, but the script is rich, and having Teresa Palmer as a badass adult daughter with commitment issues - typically a male role - is refreshing.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Lights Out" deserves to be considered in the company of such recent horror standouts as "It Follows," "The Babadook," "Goodnight Mommy" and "The Witch."

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
A brisk, studio-glossy feature that's predictable and heavily reliant on jump scares but spooky good fun nonetheless.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
In some ways the film is like an amusement park ride. You see the curves and twists coming, but if you're going fast enough, they're scary anyway.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
A terrifically effective little scarefest.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Sandberg . spares us from the indignity of jump scares. When he sets out to frighten you, he means it.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
The scares are cheap, but they're frequently effective, the same way that if you're hungry junk food might fill you up. It doesn't mean you'll feel good about it later.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The fun wears out fast and so does the "gotcha" factor.

Name : Edward Douglas / Alias : New York Daily News
Unsettling enough to make you think twice about what might be in the room with you when the lights go out.