Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Garland's primary concern is his flesh-and-blood characters, even though they are not nearly as showy (or beautiful) as his main attraction, the vulnerable, delicate girl with a heart of steel and wires.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Make no mistake, this is a film of ideas-sadder, quieter, more delicate than the Hollywood sci-fi standard-where every sliding wall of opaque glass suggests something about technology and the way people would use it.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Although "Ex Machina" is small and talky - it has just four characters, and the only action comes at the end - it also looks good. The set direction is interesting and evocative. The effects impress but don't overwhelm.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
While Mr. Garland wants to tease your brain, he's an entertainer, and in time ditches science and philosophy for romance and action.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
Ex Machina is the best movie I've seen all year.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's hard to imagine another director squeezing as many shades and colors from his screenplay as Garland did, and from now on, it would be understandable if he insisted on directing everything he writes.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Garland sidles up to some large ideas, some more provocative than others, and his premise hints at the costs of perpetual, omnivorous surveillance.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Sizzlingly smart and agreeably sententious, Mr. Garland's film transcends some all-too-human imperfections with gorgeous images, astute writing and memorably strong performances.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
"Ex Machina" takes its time, wrestling with questions of responsibility, morality and compassion while getting ever weirder. At its heart is Ava, played with a fine blend of innocence and quiet panic by Vikander.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Shrewdly imagined and persuasively made, "Ex Machina" is a spooky piece of speculative fiction that's completely plausible, capable of both thinking big thoughts and providing pulp thrills.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
A clever film with one indelible performance from Isaac.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
For a first-time director, Garland seems assured. His sharp, sparse dialogue and meticulous direction are equally compelling, and the trio of lead performances are top-notch.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
[A] methodically absorbing sci-fi drama.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The Swedish actress Alicia Vikander ("The Fifth Estate") infuses Ava with the just the right mixture of iciness, vulnerability and mystery. It's a star-making performance.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
"Ex Machina" shows there's still life left in tales of artificial intelligence.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Like stage actors who live and breathe their roles over the course of months, Isaac, Gleeson, and Vikander excel, and cast a spell.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The writer and director, Alex Garland, keeps the movie so full of doomy atmosphere that expecting the worst sort of becomes a treat. But gradually the hypnosis wears off, the mystique dissipates, and banalities take over.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ex Machina is beautiful and ominous and features another delicately nuanced performance from Isaac, who's quickly making a habit of them. But in the end, for all of Garland's ambition, his reach winds up exceeding his grasp.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Ex Machina" is a tense tale of artificial love so intelligently crafted and edgy that I adored it myself.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
It's the film version of an iPhone: small, expensive-looking and a touch overhyped - plus an addictive sales pitch for whatever Garland makes next.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
The year's most seductive high-IQ drama.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Ex Machina packs a scientist's brain inside a thrill seeker's body, much like the nubile robot within it.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Alex Garland brilliantly brings the past into the present with the near-future tale Ex Machina, a stark but dazzling meditation on intelligence, consciousness and morality that discreetly uses special effects in service of story, dialogue and character.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
"Ex Machina," despite the stutters, slowly finds its grip and starts to squeeze.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Clever novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland makes a half-dandy directorial debut with Ex Machina, a sci-fi film that - like much of his work - fakes excitingly in the direction of breaking new ground before turning formulaic so fast.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
By going deep on a simple construct, Ex Machina establishes itself as a unique and deeply unsettling psychological thriller that's both necessary and unforgettable.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
In the final analysis, the movie doesn't offer much about the subject that hasn't been previously explored, but the soil is fertile and many ideas germinate.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Reasonably diverting until its predictable (and predictably misogynistic) outcome.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
"Ex Machina" is an exquisite puzzle box of a picture. It baffles. It unsettles. It intrigues.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
I know, I know. You've seen all this A.I. stuff before. But never like this. Garland is hot for ethical shop talk on what defines humanity or lack of same.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
For dystopian future-shock fans who can look beyond its basic design flaws, Garland's feature debut functions just fine as superior pulp sci-fi.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Ex Machina" is a smart, exceptionally stylish head trip.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Its aura of cool menace is largely attributable to Isaac, stealing his every scene as the smoothly bullying CEO, and production designer Mark Digby, who created the millionaire's sleek, high-tech mountain fortress.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
It doesn't quite add up in the end, but it's heady stuff anyway, dense with moments of shivery beauty and frightening ideas.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Garland's long-anticipated directorial debut synthesizes a dizzy range of the writer's philosophical preoccupations into a sleek, spare chamber piece .

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With a stellar cast and seductive look, "Ex Machina" is a sleek contraption for capturing our imagination.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
A bit more intelligence would not have gone amiss.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ex Machina" isn't quite "Citizen Kane" for an era of Internet tycoons, but it suggests that that's not such a bad idea.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A neat psychological thriller for the digital age. Great performances compensate for a slightly slim story.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's great when a movie messes with your head.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A chilly yet engrossing drama, elevated beyond its four-people-locked-in-a-house framework by the eerie beauty of the production design and the thoughtful curiosity of Garland's screenplay.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"Crimson Peak" is frustrating from nearly every angle. It lets the audience race ahead of the reveals, while struggling to put all that tantalizingly rich atmosphere to effective narrative use.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
At its worst, and best, "Crimson Peak" exists in a weird parallel world where very separate rules of logic apply. It's a true waking nightmare.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Lurid and ghastly and immensely enjoyable and frequently spectacular and also thinner and less substantial than it wants to be, like a meal eaten in a dream.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Director Guillermo del Toro's unique visual style is on display but the story is predictable, the characters are flat, and the supernatural elements are red herrings.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
The film is too busy, and in some ways too gross, to sustain an effective atmosphere of dread. It tumbles into pastiche just when it should be swooning and sighing with earnest emotion.

Name : Jason Gorber / Alias : Globe and Mail
Guillermo del Toro's latest dive into the darkness is a sumptuous, beautifully constructed tale that feels both archaic and inviting.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Is it too much? Oh, yeah. But if you like this kind of thing, too much is never enough.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Guillermo del Toro doesn't merely direct movies. He paints them, dreams them, shapes them into private fantasies. Too much? Of course. But that's part of the fun.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
For genre mavens, the experience is like witnessing the revival of a lost art form.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The real wonder is the sumptuous production design by Thomas E. Sanders, whose darkly colorful sets were inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
"Crimson Peak" is more creepy than scary (despite a couple of gruesomely violent deaths), but del Toro's imagination blooms in every frame.

Name : Karen D'Souza / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
This haunted house flick has all the discipline and restraint of a Spirit Halloween store. Once the suspense is gone, all that's left is the blood spatter.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
[It's] certainly unequaled in its field for the beauty of its camerawork, sets, costumes and effects. But it's also conventionally plotted and not surprising or scary at all.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The setting is spectacular, but its ghosts underwhelm. Kudos to del Toro for bucking the minimalist trend in spooky movies, but his Grand Guignol spirits are so visible they begin to resemble fun-house monsters.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
As even [Del Toro's] last film, the kaiju monster movie Pacific Rim, proved, there may be no better conjurer of color in movies right now. His dreams, and nightmares, are in technicolor.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An extravagantly entertaining ghost story. Hiddleston could be our next Vincent Price.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
The insanely lush Gothic romance and ghost story plays like a hitherto unrecorded collaboration between Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, the designers of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion and whoever directed all those Bonnie Tyler music videos in the 1980s.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A loving throwback to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies and Hammer's gothic chillers from the '60s, Crimson Peak is a cobwebs-and-candelabras chamber piece that's so preoccupied with being visually stunning it forgets to be scary.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
A faithful homage to a foolish genre. The risk is that audiences who don't share that love won't appreciate the work, like the world's best cover band nailing obscure nu-metal hits

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Crimson Peak is a fascinating conundrum of a movie. I was close to hating it as I walked out of the theater, but images and moments from it have stayed with me.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
This often entertaining film feels like a mish-mash of overfamiliar elements, falling way short in the wild, weird, what-the-fuck-was-that department.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Del Toro just goes for effect, and the effect he seems to be going for here is something like, "Ew, Guillermo, that's really gross."

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The old-fashioned good intentions of "Crimson Peak," like the house at the center of the film, quickly get swallowed up by puddles of bright red goo.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
This gothic horror opus is melodrama most foul, and I mean that in terms of concept and execution, as well.

Name : Steve Tilley / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's not particularly creepy, nor all that emotional, nor even (deliberately) silly.

Name : Katie Rife / Alias : AV Club
Unsurprisingly for a Del Toro film, the production design is the real star of Crimson Peak.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
For the two hours it lasted I wasn't asking any questions, only giggling, squirming, screaming, and swooning.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
You don't go to a del Toro movie for the story (he co-wrote this one with Matthew Robins) or even the characters. You go for his all-encompassing imagery .

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Aflame with color and awash in symbolism, this undeniably ravishing yet ultimately disappointing haunted-house meller is all surface and no substance, sinking under the weight of its own self-importance into the sanguine muck below.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
This often entertaining film feels like a mish-mash of overfamiliar elements, falling way short in the wild, weird, what-the-f--was-that department.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Del Toro's creativity, the joy he finds in splicing together pieces of the movies and books and characters he loves, is hard to resist. This is a film that believes deeply in ghosts, and half of them are in its director's head.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Del Toro builds a tight plot but never develops it; his frames are overdecorated with macabre clutter and smothered in shadow, but the atmosphere of dread never reaches ecstatic excesses.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
Though Crimson Peak's tone is arch enough that it won't be for everyone, there's definitely a gory, beating heart at its core.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
All the carefully orchestrated color schemes and all the dark corridors and secret chambers and all the flowing red metaphors in the world can't accelerate the slow patches, or make us care about lead characters.