Encounter

The direction and the script open up the stage musical so much that unknowing audiences may not detect that the source material was a theater piece...

The excitement and good will so effectively built up in the first hour are distressingly dissipated thereafter; given the material, the film is&nbs...

When the film takes a shift… and it becomes more of a standard coming of age film, it gets a lot duller.

If it feels a bad sign to see Octavia Spencer this underused, listen to your instinct. And keep watching the skies.

If Pearce weren’t so heavy-handed… then Encounter, a flawed sci-fi flick with a simple premise, could be a great adventure fit for...

"Encounter" has its moments, but it suffers from multiple storytelling approaches that don’t mesh.

In the end, this is a film that hits its marks but fails to step into its own.

[Riz Ahmed’s] work alone almost makes this worth seeing, but only to imagine the better movie that could have contained it.

It all adds up to less than we hoped, though Pearce’s direction is never less than confident.

Exactly half of a good movie.

In spite of the film’s troublingly naïve take on mental trauma, Riz Ahmed vividly and empathetically captures a man’s wounded soul.

A typically charismatic performance from Riz Ahmed and a dazzling opening effects sequence won’t be enough to stop most viewers from fee...

Encounter has an interesting premise, but pacing issues result in an overlong feeling, and the film rehashes worrying tropes…

For a film that tries to be a bravura piece of genre-hopping cinema, "Encounter" too often feels confused rather than assured.

It’s dishonest, showy filmmaking.