Lucy Talbot Allen Screen Slate Aug 26, 2026

With his unobtrusive camera, Demme’s regular cinematographer Tak Fujimoto makes the mid-summer, mid-80s mid-Atlantic appear verdant, lively, and awake with possibility.

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Neil Jillett The Age (Australia) Jan 22, 2025

Whether the two halves of Something Wild -- the offbeat romp and the horrifying wallow -- fit successfully in the same film is debatable... But, viewed on their individual merits, both halves are brilliantly crafted.

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Paul Byrnes Sydney Morning Herald Jan 22, 2025

Something Wild is based more on first principles than anything new, but it applies them with such vigour that the movie has a sense of limitless freedom. It tastes like free-range chicken, rather than battery-produced.

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Pauline Kael The New Yorker Sep 13, 2023

Something Wild is rough-edged. It doesn’t have the grace of Demme’s Citizens Band and Melvin and Howard or the heightened simplicity of his Stop Making Sense. It has something else, though -- a freedom that takes off from the genre framework.

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Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand Jun 3, 2022

'Something Wild' plays like a screwball Hitchcock film reworked for the freewheeling eighties indie culture. It’s playful and colorful but doesn’t shy away from the darkness at the end of the road.

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Dave Kehr Chicago Tribune Jun 11, 2020 4/4

It's not every day that someone goes Alfred Hitchcock one better, but in ''Something Wild,'' Jonathan Demme has done it.

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William Thomas Empire Magazine Jun 11, 2020 4/5

As an artefact from a period -- the mid-80s -- that produced almost nothing distinctive, this remains breezy fun.

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Roger Hurlburt South Florida Sun-Sentinel Jun 11, 2020 3/4

Something Wild is fun, at first. Then it becomes deadly and weird and engrossing. Predictable it is not.

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People Staff People Magazine Jun 11, 2020

Buy a ticket to this whirligig of a movie at your own risk. You enter a fun house and exit through a chamber of horrors. But director Jonathan Demme provides a heck of a ride.

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Sheila Benson Los Angeles Times Jun 11, 2020

This is the Demme of "Melvin and Howard," soaring back where he belongs, and long overdue too.

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Octavi Marti El Pais (Spain) Apr 21, 2020

Something Wild is an excellent movie about the fragility of people's images. [Full Review in Spanish]

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David Nusair Reel Film Reviews Apr 21, 2020 3.5/4

It's a rather routine storyline that's perpetually employed to striking, enthralling effect by Demme...

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Judith Crist WWOR-TV (NJ) Feb 26, 2020

The end's not unexpected, and the soundtrack's overloaded with songs, but once Something Wild gets really wild -- with Daniels and Griffith and Demme's fringe comedy at their best -- the movie makes its mark as offbeat entertainment.

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Pat Padua Spectrum Culture Aug 28, 2018

Part screwball comedy and part thriller, the unpredictable turns of Something Wild indeed chart its characters' untamed, untapped inner resources.

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Christopher Machell CineVue Mar 5, 2018 3/5

Something Wild is undoubtedly a minor work in the oeuvre of all its major players, yet it is never less than charming, and at times is almost inspired.

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Josh Larsen LarsenOnFilm May 10, 2017 3.5/4

Captures the tension of trying to stand out in cookie-cutter world without alienating everyone around you.

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Nick Rogers Midwest Film Journal Jul 26, 2016 4.5/5

Radiantly human even as, and after, it erupts in violence and rage, "Something Wild" remains an astonishing rarity - a bittersweet romantic tragicomedy that's generally optimistic ... but also hesitant and harmful exactly where it needs to be.

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James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk May 20, 2011 3.5/4

The tones shift rampantly, which for some viewers can be disorienting and off-putting. But, if you're in tune with Demme's aesthetic, which usually runs counter to our cinematic intuition, it is a wild ride indeed.

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William Goss Film.com May 17, 2011

It begins with a meet-cute and ends with a murder, and sandwiched in between those emotional extremes are romance, regret and revenge.

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Christopher Long Movie Metropolis May 16, 2011 8/10

If you don't already know where it ends up then I assure you that you have no idea where it's going to end up.

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