Twisted Reviews
Chicago Reader
Top CriticThis thriller seems most interested in lingering over battered and bloodied male faces.
Time Out
Top CriticSarah Thorpe's screenplay is a compendium of by-the-book clichés; Kaufman's direction leaves the material stranded in a limbo between po-faced and trashy; Judd's approximation of drunkenness is worrying to behold.
The outdated, cliche-riddled direction is so inept and indifferent that it's hard to believe Twisted was lensed by the same Philip Kaufman who made The Right Stuff.
A suspense thriller without thrills or suspense.
Judd is let down by Twisted because tearful, confused victim doesn't come naturally to her; she's not fun to watch suffer if you can't see her calculating the payback.
This movie plays like they were reading [Roger Ebert's] little movie glossary and they took every cliche in there.
Gives new meaning to the word 'obvious.'
A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.
Philip Kaufman's Twisted amalgamates the basic post-feminist woman-cop premises of Silence Of The Lambs and the Prime Suspect TV series so torpidly it feels less like entertainment than a community service sentence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
It's all perfectly rote and only occasionally satisfying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
The film is too simple to hold our interest for nearly two hours.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
A chill-deficient suspense flick that shares too much common ominous ground with [Judd's] past thrillers.
Utterly devoid of suspense, energy or credibility.
| Original Score: 0/4
We can only regret that this is the kind of script [Kaufman's] being offered these days. Now, that's twisted.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
It's always rather sad to watch gifted performers stranded in a tepid thriller.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
As titles go, Twisted doesn't go quite far enough. Convoluted might have been better. Stretched also would have worked. Ridiculous would be most appropriate.
| Original Score: D
The script is credited to Sarah Thorp but has all the hallmarks of one of those screenplays that has gotten worse with every rewrite.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Another thriller. Another plot full of holes. Another waste of time.
| Original Score: C-
The arrival of such a dud from director Kaufman is a surprise, unless he was looking for any script that would keep him at home shooting in San Francisco.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Walks like a thriller and talks like a thriller, but it squawks like a turkey.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Twisted is eerily similar in its story line to In the Cut, the much pasted Meg Ryan sex-and-death thriller that came out last year. Only it's worse.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Hard-hitting police thrillers need a smidgen of authenticity, but Sarah Thorp's script is riddled with implausible events, inconsistent characters and head-scratching twists that don't add up.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Twisted leads to a wrap-up that'll either be visible a continent away or have you moaning, 'No, no, they can't have the nerve to float that!'
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Twisted is rubbish, but it looks good enough, moves fast enough and does improve as it progresses, principally because its plot disintegrates to the point of outright comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The greatest mystery in this nonsensical thriller is why Philip Kaufman, a first-rate director, lent his talents to such a mediocre piece of studio hackwork.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Twisted won't leave you wrung out, but it may put a crick in your neck. Trying to make sense of this ridiculous yet all too conventional movie will only make you cock your head quizzically, like a dog watching television.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Twisted's biggest mystery has nothing to do with its plot. The big question is how a first-rate director such as Phil Kaufman and a moderately first-rate cast headed by Ashley Judd became attached to this convoluted thriller wannabe.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
It entertains much like an easy crossword puzzle. You feel smart for figuring it out, then realize it wasn't all that tough.
| Original Score: 3/5
Dreary, weary psychosexual thriller that's neither sexy nor thrilling.
A predictable, completely unsuspenseful time-killer.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Twisted is just another example of a motion picture that will surprise and delight only those who see movies less frequently than they see their dentist.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
A generic, high-end Hollywood whodunit with a school of red herrings swimming through a plot that has more holes than a gopher farm.
| Original Score: 2/4
It's one of those by-the- book mysteries that makes you feel smart by keeping you a half-step ahead of the protagonist, then leaves you feeling stupid for having blown another 10 bucks.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
A barren movie full of new-style cliches and bereft of the Gothic thrills, virtuoso scenes and screw-twisting suspense that might make it interesting or fun to watch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
What happens when you combine good actors, a talented director and an awful script? Twisted answers that question so quickly it could have been made as a kind of negative case study for film students.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
A pretty lousy movie, which would be offensive were it not safely neutered by its own stupidity.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
Characters get distorted and motivations warped in this police thriller in order to keep bodies piling up and clues pointing in all directions.
