Opening

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—— Alyce Kills May 24

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—— After Earth May 31
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Surveillance (2008)

tomatometer

54

Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 72
Fresh: 39 | Rotten: 33

This dark psycho-thriller from Jennifer Lynch, is violent, sharp and baffling, but not to everyone's taste.

41

Average Rating: 4.8/10
Critic Reviews: 17
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 10

This dark psycho-thriller from Jennifer Lynch, is violent, sharp and baffling, but not to everyone's taste.

audience

43

liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 31,594

My Rating

Movie Info

An FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer attempts to capture the madman with a little assistance from his would-be victims in director Jennifer Chambers Lynch's supernatural police thriller. FBI agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) are on the trail of some killers when they arrive in a small desert town to investigate a vicious mass shooting on the highway. The witnesses are an overzealous cop, an unreliable junkie, and an eight-year-old girl. For some

R,

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

Kent Harper, Jennifer Lynch

Aug 18, 2009

Magnet Releasing - Official Site External Icon

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Cast

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All Critics (72) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (40) | Rotten (35) | DVD (4)

Pullman's striking performance here is undermined by Lynch's overreliance on those same grisly shock tactics, as well as a script that fails to capitalize on a promising premise and then swiftly collapses upon the revelation of a not-so-shocking twist.

July 24, 2009 Full Review Source: Toronto Star
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The film's a failure.

July 24, 2009 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail
Globe and Mail
Top Critic IconTop Critic

In this long-time-coming sophomore film, Lynch exercises powers of her own. She gets repellant, seductive, sympathetic performances from her actors. Ormond and Pullman are frightfully good at teasing intimacy.

July 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Denver Post
Denver Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Its mad killers may wear masks. But the real and cheap disguise here is the film's own -- an exploitation shocker trying to pass itself off as art.

July 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Newark Star-Ledger | Comment (1)
Newark Star-Ledger
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The most enjoyable way to watch Surveillance -- 'enjoyable' in the relative sense -- is to take its awfulness for granted and pay attention to everything Bill Pullman does.

July 3, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A grubby, disturbing serial-killer mystery, a kind of blood-simple Rashomon.

July 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This strange thriller mixes a penchant for grittiness with the surreal and very very dark stylings of David Lynch, who happens to be the father of the director...

March 13, 2011 Full Review Source: What Culture
What Culture

The characters do not stand out, the drama is not compelling, and the screenplay is light on even remotely interesting dialogue.

October 22, 2009 Full Review Source: Film Threat
Film Threat

Surveillance is a reprehensible film, an exercise in being nasty for the sake of being nasty, but with no style or clear sense of purpose.

September 30, 2009 Full Review Source: DVD Review
DVD Review

It is staggering to think that a film could be so horrifically nihilistic and so painfully boring at the same time, but Lynch has done it.

September 30, 2009 Full Review Source: DVD Review
DVD Review

[Blu-Ray Review] Surveillance is a well crafted film that will keep you rapt to the very end.

August 31, 2009 Full Review Source: Dread Central

[S]low-boil sinister, delivering the kind of simmering menace that few films can bother to take the time for these days...

August 18, 2009 Full Review Source: Flick Filosopher
Flick Filosopher

The pacing is so slow, you just want to yell out at the screen, "get on with it."

August 18, 2009 Full Review Source: CNNRadio
CNNRadio

Jennifer is no David Lynch and her film, while inventive and quirky and at time quite devious, misses the organic alchemy of his films.

August 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Seanax.com
Seanax.com

Some will be unable to appreciate the movie's savagery on any level. Others will find it affecting and uncompromising, the kind of movie that plunges you into a nightmare and ratchets up the intensity until you're grateful for a moment's respite.

August 8, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Examiner
San Francisco Examiner

A festival of carnage that's sometimes funny and sometimes waaay over the line.

July 24, 2009 Full Review Source: Jam! Movies
Jam! Movies

Surveillance is a respectable murder mystery until its contrived 'big reveal' causes it to deflate faster than an inner tube that was just sat on by a morbidly obese person.

July 10, 2009 Full Review Source: Watertown Daily Times
Watertown Daily Times

There are a couple of admittedly arresting images on display here and there--not enough to make this film worth watching but enough to make you hope that it doesn't take Lynch another 16 years to make another one.

July 9, 2009 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com
eFilmCritic.com

Surveillance suggests 'Jennifer Lynchian' should be used for films that aspire to David's moody, idiosyncratic genius and fall woefully short.

July 3, 2009 Full Review Source: AV Club
AV Club

A wholly engaging partial misfire, if that makes sense -- a spare yet stylish marginal recommendation that connects due to its provocative premise and ruminations on violence, and the considerations that spawns.

July 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Shared Darkness
Shared Darkness

Audience Reviews for Surveillance

Wow a decent thriller with a dark slick murder mystery. If i say anything else it could give away the whole mystery. So instead I will just say watch this one.
August 22, 2010
jmanard52

Super Reviewer

Two FBI agents question witnesses of a brutal slaying.
As this film began, I thought it was going to be a post-modern Rashomon -- the same story told from multiple perspectives with the post-modern conception that truth is mutable. David Lynch's daughter at the helm only furthered my suspicions. However, the characters' stories merely serve as diving boards for the director's objective reality, so the film has no post-modern twist or any original concept driving it forward. Lynch uses her father's scare tactics, slow shots of looming devilish figures straight out of a Carl Jung handbook for "scary," but these flourishes bore with over-use.
Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond are stolid until the last act, during which they become cartoons. The antics of the police officers and most of the other characters are so outlandish that they defy credulity; even in a small, out-of-the-way town, there's no way these officers could have gotten this far shooting out random travelers' tires and sexually assaulting drivers.
Overall, Lynch proves that she's her father's daughter, but she's without his ideas, which makes her a copycat, a poor excuse for the original.
November 17, 2012
hunterjt13
Jim Hunter

Super Reviewer

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