Kevin Maher The Times (UK) Nov 10, 2025 4/5

It’s fascinating and strangely enthralling. And funny too, in places.

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Phoenix Staff Boston Phoenix Sep 23, 2024 3/4

It's great fun, and the ending makes gleeful hash of pretentious, "metaphysical" science fiction.

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Alan Jones Radio Times Sep 13, 2024 4/5

Witty, profound and cleverly scored by its producer/director John Carpenter.

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Christopher Lloyd The Film Yap Jul 8, 2024 3/5

Careers were launched with this student film-turned-sci-fi cult classic, blasting the genre into hyperspace (almost literally!) without actually being an especially good or interesting flick.

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Joe Pollack St. Louis Post-Dispatch Oct 12, 2023

[Dark Star] can be praised for imagination and effort, if not for results... The story is mostly turgid, the acting is nothing special, and the waits between the bright spots seem interminable.

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Cody Leach Cody Leach (YouTube) Sep 10, 2022 2/5

Dark Star is a student film with a studio release and it's exactly what you expect from that. Some of Carpenter's early promise is on display but whatever impressed in 1974 has mostly faded with time and age.

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John Fleming Starburst Jul 22, 2022

Dark Star is well worth 83 minutes of anyone’s time: perhaps the most enjoyable piece of anarchy since the Marx Brothers.

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Eddie Harrison film-authority.com Feb 24, 2021 4/5

…while there are some idiosyncrasies, as might be expected from a student film expanded to feature length, hindsight has multiplied some of Dark Star’s many values….a key, cult sci-fi film…

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Mike Massie Gone With The Twins Aug 29, 2020 2/10

If it weren't for the extremely primitive special effects and set designs (though decent considering the budget), the picture might have succeeded as outright horror.

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Jacoba Atlas Los Angeles Free Press Dec 9, 2019

All good fun, without much substance or lasting power.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Nov 15, 2010 B

An enjoyable lightweight outer-space hippie spoof.

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Sean Axmaker Parallax View Nov 4, 2010

... a grungy, darkly humorous declaration that, in the end, boredom and human slovenliness trumps technology and high ideals.

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John J. Puccio Movie Metropolis Oct 26, 2010 5/10

It wouldn't be a cult classic if everybody liked it, now would it?

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Fernando F. Croce CinePassion Jun 21, 2010

John Carpenter's guerilla undermining of the pomposity of space odysseys

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Adam Smith Empire Magazine Jun 6, 2007 5/5

Hats off nonetheless to young whippersnapper John Carpenter, whose studenty tale of space tedium, aliens and molasses-black humour remains approximately a thousand times better than the director's last 15 years.

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Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Jun 6, 2007

By introducing human eccentricities into the cold structure of SF, Carpenter creates a vision of the technological future that is both disillusioned and oddly affirmative in its insistence on the unscientific survival of emotional frailty.

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Variety Staff Variety Jun 6, 2007

The dim comedy consists of sophomoric notations and mistimed one-liners.

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Nick Schager Lessons of Darkness Apr 26, 2007 B-

Isn't nearly as funny as it once was...but it nonetheless has its amusing moments.

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