Metacritic reviews

A film that should be shamelessly soaked in passion and thrusting erotic delirium is instead posed and prettified, to the point where “camp” comes to mean more than the place where lumberjacks work – it’s also the movie’s defining vibe.

An arrestingly nihilistic Depression melodrama, marked by courageous performances and exquisite production values... The result is both problematic and fascinating, an unsympathetic spiral of human tragedy that plays a little like a hand-me-down folk ballad put to film.

This is a film full of unremarkable compromises — the kind that result in a bland film rather than a bad one.

Whatever Ron Rash’s novel had to offer, Bier has rendered it into something soapy, with everything compelling about it washed out.

Commercially it looks a disaster. Artistically, if very far from a triumph, it’s interesting, almost held together by its charismatic stars.

We don’t invest anything in either character, and with barely any tension, Serena grabs neither head nor heart.

It is difficult to believe a single word of it, still less to care about these relentlessly selfish and short-sighted characters.

Serena is quite bad, as it happens, but until it goes absolutely haywire in the final act, the biggest problem is that it’s all bones and no flesh, so busy combining all the structural elements that go into an award-winner that it has no personality of its own.

The film can't reconcile Ron Rash's apocalyptic tenderness with its own eagerness to revel in romantic star allure.

The film isn't bad enough to be some kind of potential cult classic: it's tedious, with even the stranger moments and plot developments failing to raise the pulse.