Those Who Killed Horizon

The critics’ response to Kevin Costner’s Western epic Horizon: An American Saga- Chapter 1 is a new low for film criticism.

Credit: Territory Pictures and Warner Bros.

I’ve seen plenty of good and great films laughed at and pissed on by film critics. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and Lisa Joy’s Reminiscence are just two. It’s what I expect from film critics now even if it’s not what I want from them. Most film critics are biased or incompetent or both, and that’s half the reason why I became a film critic and started Into the Screen, but the critics’ response to Kevin Costner’s Western epic Horizon: An American Saga- Chapter 1 is a new low for film criticism. For the first time, their inability to critique like professionals has had real world consequences. Horizonwas a flop and the critics are likely partly to blame. Audiences choose which films to see based on critics’ reviews. The film flopped so bad that Costner pulled the second Horizon film from its August release date. Now doubt looms over whether it and the other three films he’d planned in this American Saga will ever see the cinema screen. Because of the critics, this story about how “people are unstoppable,” this beautiful story, may never be finished, and they get to keep their pay checks, their jobs and their power to do the same to any other film and never have to be held accountable for the dream they’ve helped destroy.

I say: no more.

I am going to hold them accountable.

Here on this page, I hang their words to show why no filmgoer should listen to them when choosing which film to see. I have had to limit myself to a handful of critics for practicality but the same threads in these critics’ reviews run through much of the criticism I’ve read of Horizon.