79
Metascore
48 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100HitfixDrew McWeenyHitfixDrew McWeeny"Dawn" is not just a good genre movie or a good summer movie. It's a great science-fiction film, full-stop, and one of the year's very best movies so far.
- 100The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDawn of the Planet of the Apes manages to do at least three things exceptionally well that are hard enough to pull off individually: Maintain a simmering level of tension without let-up for two hours, seriously improve on a very good first entry in a franchise and produce a powerful humanistic statement using a significantly simian cast of characters.
- Just as 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes surpassed expectations, so this sequel delivers on its promise and leaves us wanting more – which we'll almost certainly get.
- 80Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonTime Out LondonTom HuddlestonIt may lack its predecessor’s lofty ambitions, but once the bullets, spears and hairy fists start flying you’ll be too wrapped up to care.
- 80Total FilmTotal FilmNot quite the intimate parable of the first movie nor a balls-to-the-wall battlefield extravaganza, Dawn is pitched somewhere in the middle, with much of its two hour-plus running time powered by the simmering, expertly sustained tension both between and within the two species.
- 80Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekVillage VoiceStephanie ZacharekDawn of the Planet of the Apes is a much better and far less silly movie than its predecessor.
- 75Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneSlant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneThis is a summer blockbuster contingent on grand bargains, tactical retreats, and a ferocious, inevitable shock-and-awe campaign.
- 75McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMcClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreAn action-packed epic, a moving sci-fi allegory rendered in broad, lush strokes by the latest state of the computer animator’s art.