Mixed or average reviews - based on 24 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 24
  2. Negative: 6 out of 24
  1. 50
    A feeling of hopelessness pervades Sleepwalking.
  2. A soporific dud, which should have been tossed out of Sundance.
  3. 38
    Relentlessly depressing.
  4. 63
    Stanford's script is painfully obvious, right down to the line of dialogue spelling out the title's significance.
  5. But the regularly overlooked Stahl burrows honestly into this unpleasant place, adding another worthy portrait to his indie gallery of interesting losers. He's still an actor worth keeping your eyes on. Assuming you can keep them open.
  6. As Mr. Maher, in his feature directing debut, brings in surreal touches and puts on literary airs, the film’s grip loosens, and its vernacular turns increasingly wooden.
  7. Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
  8. 50
    The movie seems terrified of true psychological complexity or perversity. It's less a family tragedy than a lousy country dirge.
  9. 50
  10. Despite its deficiencies, and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who's quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling. It's about a do-gooder who, lacking all skills for it, does good anyway. His emotional odyssey has real poignancy.
  12. The whole picture plays like a pop-up book in a welfare agency.
  13. 30
    An inert, sloppily written melodrama as grim and featureless as its frozen Midwestern setting.
  14. 40
    There's loads of suffering in Sleepwalking, piled on until the picture almost becomes an unintentional comedy.
  15. 50
    Well-intentioned to a fault, Sleepwalking blurs the line between dramatizing free-floating misery and spreading it.
  16. Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    It's because of AnnaSophia Robb's performance...I don't think you'll see a more fascinating and nuanced performance at the movies this year.
  17. Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
  18. A slow-moving family drama guaranteed to induce a nap if not somnambulism.
  19. 50
    Terrific performances and a bleak, riveting look at life on the economic fringes eventually gives way to an overly familiar tale of abuse, denial and catharsis that feels like warmed over Sam Shepard minus the poetry.
  20. Reviewed by: Stephen Farber
    Even if the movie takes you to some dark places you would rather not visit, at least you will remember the actors who navigate the tortured journey.
  21. Reviewed by: Zack Haddad
    It’s a shame that this film’s star-studded cast wasn’t able to save the mediocre storyline.
  22. Reviewed by: Josh Rosenblatt
    Unfortunately, Sleepwalking isn’t content being a character study of damaged adult siblings (if it were, it would have made a nice companion piece to Kenneth Lonergan’s "You Can Count on Me," which is a far less sobering, but far more effective, movie).
  23. Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    Theron and Woody Harrelson provide vitality against the film's heavy load, but they aren't around long enough to keep it from collapsing under its own portentous weight.

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