76
Metascore
53 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The GuardianXan BrooksThe GuardianXan BrooksKristen Stewart proves entirely compelling in the title role. She gives an awkward and mannered performance as Diana, and this is entirely as it should be when one considers that Diana gave an awkward and mannered performance herself, garnishing her inbred posh hauteur with studied coquettish asides.
- 100The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinThe 31-year-old Stewart – who will be instantly and justifiably awards-tipped for this – navigates this perilous terrain with total mastery, getting the voice and mannerisms just right but vamping everything up just a notch, in order to better lean into the film’s melodramatic, paranoiac and absurdist swerves.
- 100The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangAll the right people are going to hate Spencer. That’s just how good it is.
- 100VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanSpencer is an intimate speculative drama that stays as close as it can to everything we know about Diana. At the same time, the movie is infused with a poetic extravagance.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyNot everything lands in Spencer, and I often wondered if the film was so set on bucking convention that it would alienate its audience. But it tells a sorrowful story we all think we know in a new and genuinely disturbing light.
- 75RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloRogerEbert.comMonica CastilloPablo Larraín’s Spencer is a haunting reimagining of a tense Christmas holiday in the life of Princess Diana.
- 75The Film StageDavid KatzThe Film StageDavid KatzThis is a film that will potentially delight, challenge, and force its wide target audience to take seriously on its own terms. A dream ballet of a dying star.
- 67IndieWireBen CrollIndieWireBen CrollDoing away with any pretense of docu-realism, Spencer is neither a film about specifics nor any of conventional biopic; it is instead a sort of haunted house chamber piece that doesn’t try to locate the real woman behind the legend — as the title might suggest — as it does to reimagine her within a wholly different pop lexicon.
- 60Stewart is such inspired casting that she makes all this eccentric nonsense watchable.
- 50Stewart gives her all, as she always does. But she plays Diana as a mannered doe—all wrong, given that does are the most unmannered creatures on Earth. Her performance is clearly stylized, but it’s also packed with calculation and guile. Larraín turns this Diana into exactly the thing the royal family accused the real-life Diana of being, a willful and pouty constant complainer.