Black Snake Moan: Critic Reviews

Be prepared to collapse into a hoot and a howl of hilarity at all the wrong moments.

In spite of Amelia Vincent's toothsome cinematography and the down-home locations, the movie often has the lumbering, literal-minded rhythms of a second-rate stage play -- not a moan or a howl, but a slow, anxious groan.

Jackson's elegant performance gives the frequently tough to swallow story some credence.

An absurdly jarring collection of archetypal characters in miserable circumstances with a resolution that feels forced and tacked on.

Brewer's reworking of Southern mythologies can sometimes seem condescending, even though his affection for the region's culture is palpable. But there's no denying he knows how to spin a yarn and create vivid, indelible images.

Had the old black man and the young white chick gotten it on, I think some audiences might have exploded. Perhaps sensing this, Black Snake Moan backs off, giving us a neat and clean Hallmark card ending.

For God's sake, don't be boring. Alas, after his camera has had its fill of ogling Rae, Brewer turns out to have nothing up his sleeve, nothing in his pants, only a little on his mind and none of it, amazingly, to do with race.

The movie strolls right past absurdity into offensiveness, by trying to pass this pulp nonsense off as noble art.

For all the preposterous cliches of the plot, Black Snake Moan finds unchained energy in its foolishness, and gives Mr. Jackson a chance to pluck a guitar and sing.

It's a steamy, searing saga of rigorous redemption confronting creepy Southern seediness. But it's not nearly the wake-up call it could have been.

Black Snake Moan is thick with Tennessee sweat and grit and the sound of insects. And it takes an overwrought, steamy path to what at least feels like a moral cautionary tale.

Black Snake Moan is a myth-and-reconciliation story with outlandish scenes meant to make you laugh, make you uncomfortable. Both.

I loved the picture's tabloid energy and heart.

I love the way that both Samuel Jackson and Christina Ricci take chances like this, and the way that Brewer creates characters of unbelievable forbearance.

Black Snake Moan strikes me as hogwash. It fundamentally does not work; its consciously far-fetched, out-there notions of the things damaged people do in the name of love are reductive and go only so far.

Any movie that can make Samuel L. Jackson convincing as a great Memphis bluesman must be doing something right.

Humid and overwrought, with Ricci working at fever pitch and Jackson bringing fire, brimstone and some passable blues licks to the equation, Black Snake Moan is no polite little indie thing, and certainly no formulaic studio exercise.

It may pull you into the tent with a promise of hoochie-koochie girls, but it delivers a rousing sermon on faith, hope and charity before it lets you back out again.

Having established his characters and built their bond, having cooked up a sense of place so strong you can taste it, Brewer can't find anywhere in particular to go. Suddenly he brings a gun into the mix, then takes an awkward Dr. Phil turn.

I saw something, but I'm not exactly sure what it was. One thing's likely: You've never seen a film like Black Snake Moan, and you won't see anything like it in the near future.

Whatever did the actors see in this pig slop?

A well-executed, handsome-looking film that runs perhaps 20 minutes longer than it should given its storyline.

This is the kind of movie that's best enjoyed as a stylized fantasy, much like Brewer's most obvious model, Elia Kazan's Southern-fried Tennessee Williams adaptation Baby Doll.

A cartoonish Baby Doll, with a suggestive blues song title, about sex, guilt and redemption. Black Snake is also a rather flimsy parable unable to support the weight of Brewers ambition.

Despite its considerable unwholesome appeal, the movie gives us the feeling it has been chained up as well and that chain won't let it go any farther than a single outrageous idea.