Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
A striking portrait of addiction that doesn't say anything new - drugs are bad, kids - but it leaves a lasting and chilling impression.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
It also helps that Holmes, Jones and Duress, as well as the mainly non-actors in secondary roles, all inhabit their characters with real conviction.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
It centers on electrifying newcomer Arielle Holmes as a homeless junkie named Harley, a character largely shaped by the performer's own extremely recent past.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's just a portrait of emptiness, but it feels a lot like the real thing.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
By the end of Heaven Knows What, you see Ilya's fragile, unguarded soul through Harley's eyes, and the film's discordances sound like the music of the spheres.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Even if you don't know the place used to be called Needle Park, Josh and Benny Safdie's extraordinary indie will put you in mind of that 1971 NYC classic. It may even become one itself.

Name : Danny King / Alias : Village Voice
Together, the images and the sounds turn Harley's reality into a pulverizing grind from which escape is barely even a distant thought.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
One junkie story tends to be much like another, so give brothers Josh and Benny Safdie credit for crafting one that's genuinely distinctive.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
For much of the movie, [the Safdies] keep the camera discomfitingly close to the characters, blurring out the background and immersing us in their telescoped world.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Although the film is raw, intense and even beautiful at times, the queasy knowledge of how it all came together constantly threatens to uproot any artistry.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
New York-based brothers Josh and Benny Safdie look past Manhattan's glossy surfaces to reveal an underworld of homeless young heroin addicts hidden in plain sight.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
When going for gritty realism, it doesn't hurt to have your lead actress essentially playing herself.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Fans of the cinematic street poet Larry Clark (Kids, Bully) might go for this, though the unexpected moments of dignity and compassion that deepen his characters are in short supply here.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Unpleasant moral ambiguity is served boiling hot in this drug-poisoned love story.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Obeys many conventions of the genre, trying its best to plunge viewers into a world that, while seemingly liberated of bourgeois proprieties, is actually a narrowly constricted prison of desperation and need.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Heaven Knows What feels like an authentic, sometimes painfully accurate portrait of life in New York City as experienced by the homeless, ever-hustling teenagers.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Heaven Knows What [has] a backstory precisely as fraught as what happens on screen. And that's pretty fraught.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
There's never a false moment.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Heaven Knows What quickly obtains an oddly charming rhythm, a sense of eavesdropping on sometimes unlikable, but fully realized, social outsiders.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Holmes has a face that reveals everything and nothing. Besides being strikingly photogenic, she's a natural.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
All this desperation and squalor reeks of authenticity.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
At the very least, the directors, Josh and Benny Safdie, have created a small, beautiful classic of street theater by rendering these public disputes within a vibrant Manhattan setting through ingenious photography.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I'm glad I saw this film; considered on its own merits, in terms of what I understand as its artistic goals, it's a wrenching and finely wrought piece of work.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
The new "Poltergeist" might well be the scariest movie 13-or-unders have yet seen, just as the original was for their parents back in 1982.

Name : Drew Hunt / Alias : Chicago Reader
Director Gil Kenan ruins the pacing with too many half-baked, awkwardly staged horror set pieces, but the cast acquit themselves well enough.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Just as the original was one of the scariest PG movies ever, the reboot has about as much gruesomeness as you can possibly stuff into a PG-13.

Name : Clark Collis / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Poltergeist does benefit from briskness-it's actually 20 minutes shorter than Hooper's film-and there is a nice, Evil Dead 2-esque sequence involving a power drill.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
This new spooky-house chiller never escapes the shadow of its predecessor, but it also pales next to the scores of subsequent movies - "The Conjuring," "Insidious," and "Paranormal Activity" - that already stripped the original "Poltergeist" for parts.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
There are some jumps but few legitimate scares, unlike director Tobe Hooper's original, which, although similarly bloodless, still stands as one of the scariest movies ever made.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
There's little doubt that nostalgia played a part in Fox's decision to remake Poltergeist, but that's a poor reason for any film's existence and no excuse for how uninspired Gil Kenan's re-imagining of this one turned out.

Name : Eddie Goldberger / Alias : New York Daily News
It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but Poltergeist is a solid, surprisingly effective chiller that's respectful towards its 1982 predecessor while acquitting itself as a proficient update.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Poltergeist 2015 is to Poltergeist '82 what today's shipped-frozen-to-the-store Pizza Hut dough is to the kneaded-on-site pies the chain's stoned cooks tossed in the Reagan era.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
This has more in common with slick, audience-goosing modern spookers like 'Insidious' than with Hooper & Spielberg's imaginative original.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
The original film was promoted with the tagline "It knows what scares you." If there was a truth-in-advertising law regarding films, this movie's ad copy would read: "Poltergeist: Meh."

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This new Poltergeist isn't anything special . But it's not a travesty, and that feels like cause for brief celebration.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
This remake is over 20 minutes shorter than the original "Poltergeist," and it saved most of that time by sacrificing the beginning and end.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
[A] professionally executed yet bloodless film . an act of homage that hews reverently to its source material while missing the essential spirit and vitality that once powered it.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Leaving behind the youth-skewing perspectives of Monster House and City of Ember, director Gil Kenan not only delivers on the promise of Hooper's Poltergeist, but significantly raises the stakes for similar PG-13 fare.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
It's not exactly a scary film, but it does provide an enjoyable ride. It's good fun. But it left me befuddled. A little sad. And a little angry.