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Top Critics (32)
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Fresh (106)
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DVD (33)
A staccato narrative parallels the experiences and hallucinations of a woman on drugs with those of her son and his friends.
[It] may be a bummer to some audiences, so harsh is its view of the drug culture. But no one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.
One of those films you both admire and hate for admiring. I liked it in spite of myself.
Conveys, visually, sonically and dramatically, the siren call of addiction like no other movie has.
Both bleak and bleakly funny, appalling in its excesses and exhilarating in its execution.
Aronofsky has fashioned a chilling vision that lives up to the caustic irony of its title and gives us a nightmare that is not lightly forgotten.
Aronofsky's second feature is an emotionally intense, relentlessly grim tale of forms of addiction that may rely too much on montage to achieve real dramatic impact.
Translating this into a music video would make a lot more sense than the film does in present form
"Dream" glamorizes nothing en route to a near-nauseating finale, which feels like a rollercoaster car hitched off the track and hurtled into hell's depths. A decade later, it still follows through with full force on its cautionary stomach punch.
Unfortunately, about halfway through, the film takes a (deliberate) nosedive into the depths of human degradation from which it never emerges.
Shocking, grim addiction saga worth discussing.
Doesn't demand an upgrade for those who already own the standard-definition release, but the Blu-ray release is nevertheless an improvement in the presentation of Aronofsky's horrific vision.
A gut-wrenching, formally adventurous masterpiece or an ugly, flashy piece of empty-headed propaganda?
"Requiem For A Dream" is a movie about drug addiction, but that's only where the plot resides so the thoroughly drawn characters can work toward their imperfect dreams. Cinema history has been made with this
One of the most powerful I have ever seen. The film's score and editing will haunt you for years to come.
Yes, visually this is an exhilarating, unique film. But it is also a singularly difficult and challenging film to watch.
If Aronofsky set out to make Trainspotting look like Teletubbies, he succeeded. Recommended only for those with extremely strong stomachs.
Requiem for a Dream is meant to have a hallucinatory, mesmerizing quality, but it manages to be about as enlightening as a bad acid trip.
Burnished camerawork and ex-Pop Will Eat Itself head Mansell's part-punchy, part-elegiac score reinforce and counterpoint the increasingly nightmarish visuals.
Requiem for a Dream is a great movie, and the few of us who see it will be acutely affected.
There's a wholehearted commitment in every frame toward synthesizing the feeling of hopeless addiction. It's in the writing. It's in the chaotic cinematography. It's in the actors' eyes.
With this movie, Aronofsky sends a couple of messages. One, of course, is about how much habitual drug use can fuel your delusions and what that combination can take away from you. The other message is that the director is now a major American filmmaker.
It's the type of experience that you will never cry at in the theater, but will cry at long after, as the message fully sinks in.
An unordinary, highly stylized, gritty hyperkinetic junkie movie -- unlike anything you've seen before.
By using familiar ploys and images only slightly askew of what television advertisements regularly show, Aronofsky manages to get across the sameness and pervasiveness of addictions of all sorts without becoming didactic.
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