The East Reviews
Bloomberg News
The movie's squishy moralism withstands only a tad more scrutiny than its plot contrivances.
Film School Rejects
As a thriller, the movie begins with a taught pace but then begins to lose that discipline as the film dwindles along.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
We Got This Covered
The East is a wooden and unappealing chore, treading familiar ground for the filmmakers with an additional layer of clunky, drama-killing political soap-boxing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
CraveOnline
The East's obvious social ambitions would be perhaps better served by a storyline that doesn't play like the adventures of a college freshman with a hopeless crush on her anthropology teacher.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
The List
The writers never quite get under the skin of these characters, or fully to grips with the complexity of the situation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top Critic"The East" prizes an initial air of mystery over consistent drama, and as a result ends up squandering its intriguing premise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
When the filmmakers try to flesh out the terrorists, they fall back on the conservative cliche that they're spoiled rich kids, mad at their parents.
It gives us an interesting character with genuine moral ambiguity and demands that she make tough choices and that we think about what tactics we support -- and then it completely fritters it all away with a pat ending.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
The whole movie has the smugness of a cult. At one and the same time it's devoid of reality and insufferably full of itself.
Screen International
A polished thriller that grows muddled and predictable as it zooms along.
Digital Spy
The East suffers from a critical identity crisis, squandering an initially intriguing premise to veer awkwardly between intimate character study and formulaic espionage thriller. It satisfies on neither count.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Film Racket
perfectly competent but still somewhat generic
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
This absurdly superficial and tendentious drama, directed with no distinction, wastes a superb cast in the interest of self-righteous attitudinizing.
Marling has a focus and poise that keeps us invested in her character's journey - even when the film begins to falter, as The East eventually does through inconsistency and expedience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"The East's" eco-friendly politics might be Swiss, but its overly sentimental storyline is pure Velveeta.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
HollywoodChicago.com
Why was the opportunity for true commentary or even character development within this fascinating world discarded in favor of an awkwardly-staged and poorly-written love story laden with genre tropes?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5.0
Reeling Reviews
Replace [Sound of My Voice's] cult with this film's collective, a group bonded via trust rituals and unusual dietary demands; an outsider whose truth remains suspect and an ending based on betrayal and essentially you've got the same film.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
As uncertain as she is as a screenwriter, Marling is even less accomplished as an actress - problems she compounds by invariably giving herself the lead role in her own scripts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
