Dan Schindel Screen Slate Aug 13, 2026

In general, there is a more whimsical, picaresque tone where the book was much darker.

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Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Mar 31, 2026 3.5/4

It would be no easy task bringing Flannery O’Connor’s stories to the screen, yet here’s John Huston bucking the odds as he often did over the course of his remarkable career.

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Eddie Harrison film-authority.com May 1, 2023 4/5

…an allegory, but of a wry and intelligent kind that’s peppered with memorable moments and scenes, impeccably played…

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Tom Huhn Washington Blade May 18, 2022

Every shot in the film seems efficient and economical: clever and skillful in most cases, but always precise. [It] leaves the viewer amazed, puzzled, but finally satisfied. The film is ultimately honest at a time when that quality seems rarer and rarer.

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Stephen Farber New West/California Nov 4, 2021

Wise Blood is as sly and nimble as some of the late films of Bunuel. Huston is now 73, so this is an old man's film, but it has a vigor and audacity that most young directors should envy.

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Keith Uhlich Time Out Aug 4, 2020 5/6

Flannery O'Connor's incisive sense of person and place is brilliantly captured in this 1979 film adaptation of her highly regarded first novel, which plays out as a broad comedy set within a timeless purgatory.

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Jesús Fernández Santos El Pais (Spain) Aug 12, 2019

John Huston's exploration of humanity goes beyond the purely individual to the anecdotical, which is why he's capable of attracting all sorts of viewers. [Full Review in Spanish]

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Peter Ackroyd The Spectator Mar 20, 2019

Wise Blood would have worked, at least as a piece of local grotesquerie, if it had remained at an impressionistic farcical level. But it tries to encompass more than this.

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Tara Judah Desist Film Jan 24, 2019

Wise Blood is an unsettling account of post-war machismo and mental illness wrapped up in small town values and big ideas.

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Frank Rich TIME Magazine Sep 19, 2014

This time, Huston has found material that was all but guaranteed to fuel the battiest recesses of his imagination.

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Philip Kemp Total Film Sep 19, 2014 3/5

Funny, tragic, philosophical, farcical -- this is Huston near the top of his form. A useful batch of interviews, including one with Dourif.

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Tony Sloman Radio Times Sep 19, 2014 3/5

Ultimately the movie's taste becomes highly questionable.

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Variety Staff Variety Jul 6, 2010

John Huston, with uncluttered direction and expert handling of actors, has fashioned a disturbing tale of the fringe side of overzealous religious preachers in the deep South.

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Christopher Long Movie Metropolis Jul 28, 2009 8/10

I dont have to run away from anything cause I dont believe in anything!

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James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk Jun 30, 2009 2/4

strange, sub-Coen Brothers caricature that, especially when underscored with Alex North's deliberately hammy hillbilly music, never amounts to much more than a condescending tragicomic satire of spiritual emptiness

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Matthew Sorrento Film Threat Jun 25, 2009 3.5/5

Huston stays true to the novel's events but draws from the story all the black comedy he can find. We are in strange territory.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews May 15, 2009 A

Any film that features both Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty as scam artists and its tale about religious hypocrisy borders on madness, is one not to be missed.

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Chris Cabin Filmcritic.com May 13, 2009 4/5

perhaps the most ballistic of Huston's late-period films

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Bill Weber Slant Magazine May 13, 2009 3/4

Huston's Wise Blood is a sharp, busy canvas that, like a man with a good car, doesn't need to be justified.

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