Mud Reviews
Electric Sheep
Mud clearly sets out from frame one to run along well-worn tracks - it's like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meets Whistle down the Wind.
Eye for Film
By setting the action within a quasi-mythic framework Nichols is able to draw us into his big adventure and help us to rediscover the whispers of youth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Top CriticNichols has a strong feeling for the tactility of natural elements-water, wood, terrain, weather.
Digital Spy
A stirring ode to innocence that evokes classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Stand By Me.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Scotsman
Mud has some interesting things to say about southern manhood, and is observant about the struggle between head and heart, even if it is less forthcoming on how you get a boat out of a tree.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Empire Magazine
A bold, intelligent, 21st century take on Mark Twain - with added occult tendencies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Nichols takes his time with the story, dwelling on how the boy is shaped by the killer's tragic sense of romance, yet the suspense holds.
ScreenRant
Mud is a potent and earnest rumination on love and change that gets muddled by moments of overblown as well as scattered storytelling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
San Francisco Examiner
The setting, characters and situations in "Mud" are fully formed and fully satisfying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
American Profile
A modern-day Huck Finn adventure pulled along in the mesmerizing current of a crime yarn and anchored to a teenager's heartbreaking quest for emotional moorings.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
tonymacklin.net
Like great directors before him -- Hitchcock, Polanski, Altman, et al. -- Nichols uses duality with real skill and impact.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.0/5
Common Sense Media
Poignant coming-of-age tale has some edgy content.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
This is no Southern Gothic pastiche but a convincing portrait of a South rarely seen onscreen, the South of Walmarts and water moccasins, of Piggy-Wiggly and punk rock.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
LarsenOnFilm
I liked Mud. What's frustrating is feeling as if I could have loved it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Daily Telegraph
It's a lovely, coherent piece of storytelling, with a unique sense of place. Nichols has carved out a niche as a distinctive film-maker.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Creative Loafing
With Mud, Jeff Nichols demonstrates once again that he's that rare breed of filmmaker who prefers to bury himself in the dirt of rural America rather than carve his initials into the concrete of sprawling urbanity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
East Bay Express
Nichols weaves it all together with consummate skill and a little black pepper.
CraveOnline
It's rare that films manage to capture the actual experience of what it is like to be a child, but 'Mud' seems to nail the ethos.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
Examiner.com
Mud is a captivating drama with well-rounded characters and fantastic performances from its three leads.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8.5/10
Movies.com
...a respectful, storyteller's approach to rural America. No mockery, no Hollywood-knows-better, no nonsense. That kind of thing is in shorter supply than the universe's collective desire for McConaughey to return to rom-coms.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
