Metacritic reviews

This is the first movie about virtual reality to deal in a challenging way with the implications of the technology. It's fascinating the way Bigelow is able to suggest so much of VR's impact (and dangers) within a movie - a form of VR that's a century old.

Undeniably thrilling and troubling...Dazzling, era-defining.

Fascinating.

Flawed, but often brilliant, provocative film-making.

Strange Days is a thriller first and a mystery second. It's big, explosive entertainment and, although not directed by Cameron, is very much in the vein we've come to expect from him. Strange Days may not be the best movie to hit screens during the Fall, but it's likely to be the brashest.

From the visceral plunges of the first person mind clip sequences (including a terrifying, controversy courting rape sequence) to the overwhelming finale this is a, literally, stunning event. Some directors can, thank God, still make you experience films.

A technical tour de force for director Kathryn Bigelow and her team, pic is less accomplished in putting over its characters, emotions and dubious sociopolitical agenda.

Only when it comes time to justify its excesses and deliver on a promise of wider revelation does the otherwise audacious screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks look too specific and small.

It hurts to see this story reach for a tidy ending... STRANGE DAYS hurtles down the track for two hours, frantically trying to warn us en route to the Big Switchback, only to pull up in a hiss of smoke and hot air.

A film that's prescient and mind-bogglingly ill-conceived in roughly equal measures...Strange Days is the cinematic equivalent of trip-hop, a shadowy realm of atmosphere, mood and suggestion with a decidedly drugged-up, post-apocalyptic feel. But the many things Strange Days gets right are negated by the things it gets wrong.