Stay: Critic Reviews

Maybe he's also Sam. Or an aspect of Sam. Or else Sam is an aspect of Henry. Maybe Henry is an aspect of Lila. Maybe what we think is reality is all an illusion. Maybe illusion is actually reality. Maybe we're all jacked into the Matrix.

Rod Serling would have wrapped this mysterioso story about a psychiatrist and a suicidal patient dislocated by time, space and a lot of crazily raked angles into a tight half-hour episode.

Ultimately empty.

It's worse than bad. It's mediocre.

In Marc Forster's humorless thriller, going insane is an exciting, luxurious affair.

Whether you guess the ending early or have it smack you upside the head, the result is the same: You'll be out the price of a ticket.

It's hard to imagine a film more perversely obtuse than this dark, grim exercise in cinematic sleight of hand.

Stay, it won't.

The brain power you expend making sense of it is better spent elsewhere.

When the movie is over, and we know all that is to be known, it deserves some thought.

Though visual prodigies abound, the nightmare never gets real enough.

It's all very deep, but in a tricked-up, art-directed sort of way.

Gosling and McGregor deliver beyond-the-call-of-duty performances that hold you riveted even when the story goes silly.

Stay is a cheap trick. Avoid it.

The visual effects, especially those used to enhance the metaphysical elements, are impressive, but the story lacks that certain something.

This is the kind of flop that makes even the popcorn taste lousy.

Most will likely sniff this one out for what it is, a would-be mystery thriller with pretensions to being something more that actually delivers a good deal less.

There's no payoff as things drag along to a ludicrous ending that reeks of contempt for its audience.

Stay is a heartless puzzle that builds no empathy for its characters, no pathos at all, as it is giving us many cryptic clues that don't really lead to that finale. It's an intellectual exercise, not an emotional one.

Sometimes artful doesn't make up for annoying.

Stay is all dressed up with no place to go, an eye-popping exercise in lavish style unattached to any discernible content.

S lot of talent gets expended in Stay. (I'm not including whoever dressed McGregor.) Too bad the movie they made, while effective in short spurts, is almost a complete waste of time.

Stay is interesting, but it's hard to recommend to anyone but the small cadre of David Lynch devotees who will inhale anything with a whiff of similarity to their favorite auteur's scent.

The movie demands that its viewers put the fragmented images and information together like an intellectual jigsaw puzzle, but it never gives those viewers a good reason to do so.