Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
It centers on electrifying newcomer Arielle Holmes as a homeless junkie named Harley, a character largely shaped by the performer's own extremely recent past.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Unpleasant moral ambiguity is served boiling hot in this drug-poisoned love story.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
When going for gritty realism, it doesn't hurt to have your lead actress essentially playing herself.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Fans of the cinematic street poet Larry Clark (Kids, Bully) might go for this, though the unexpected moments of dignity and compassion that deepen his characters are in short supply here.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
By the end of Heaven Knows What, you see Ilya's fragile, unguarded soul through Harley's eyes, and the film's discordances sound like the music of the spheres.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
All this desperation and squalor reeks of authenticity.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Holmes has a face that reveals everything and nothing. Besides being strikingly photogenic, she's a natural.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's just a portrait of emptiness, but it feels a lot like the real thing.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
It also helps that Holmes, Jones and Duress, as well as the mainly non-actors in secondary roles, all inhabit their characters with real conviction.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
At the very least, the directors, Josh and Benny Safdie, have created a small, beautiful classic of street theater by rendering these public disputes within a vibrant Manhattan setting through ingenious photography.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
For much of the movie, [the Safdies] keep the camera discomfitingly close to the characters, blurring out the background and immersing us in their telescoped world.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Heaven Knows What quickly obtains an oddly charming rhythm, a sense of eavesdropping on sometimes unlikable, but fully realized, social outsiders.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
A striking portrait of addiction that doesn't say anything new - drugs are bad, kids - but it leaves a lasting and chilling impression.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I'm glad I saw this film; considered on its own merits, in terms of what I understand as its artistic goals, it's a wrenching and finely wrought piece of work.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Heaven Knows What [has] a backstory precisely as fraught as what happens on screen. And that's pretty fraught.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Although the film is raw, intense and even beautiful at times, the queasy knowledge of how it all came together constantly threatens to uproot any artistry.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Even if you don't know the place used to be called Needle Park, Josh and Benny Safdie's extraordinary indie will put you in mind of that 1971 NYC classic. It may even become one itself.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
One junkie story tends to be much like another, so give brothers Josh and Benny Safdie credit for crafting one that's genuinely distinctive.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
New York-based brothers Josh and Benny Safdie look past Manhattan's glossy surfaces to reveal an underworld of homeless young heroin addicts hidden in plain sight.

Name : Danny King / Alias : Village Voice
Together, the images and the sounds turn Harley's reality into a pulverizing grind from which escape is barely even a distant thought.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Heaven Knows What feels like an authentic, sometimes painfully accurate portrait of life in New York City as experienced by the homeless, ever-hustling teenagers.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Obeys many conventions of the genre, trying its best to plunge viewers into a world that, while seemingly liberated of bourgeois proprieties, is actually a narrowly constricted prison of desperation and need.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
There's never a false moment.

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.