Critical reception
The World to Come holds a 74% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 149 reviews, with an average of 6.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The World to Come is made from ingredients that will be familiar to fans of period forbidden romance movies, but they're given fresh life thanks to an excellent cast." [15] On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 73 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally positive" reviews. [16]
Xan Brooks of The Guardian called it "a ravishingly beautiful love story set in 1850s America, with painterly visuals that nod to the work of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent"; he opined that Waterson delivered "a moving central performance as Abigail". [17] Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com wrote "You long for something evocative and warm throughout The World to Come, only to leave it with a minor shiver." [18] Guy Lodge of Variety wrote "Fastvold doesn’t resist the obviousness of her film’s seasonal metaphors, but doesn’t overwork them other: This is filmmaking as attuned to incremental shifts in light and landscape (Romania’s, in fact, gorgeously filling in for undeveloped upstate New York) as the ebb and flow of a character’s interior joy, written in a face unaccustomed to smiling." [19] Jonathan Romney of Screen International wrote "It would be easy to sell The World to Come as ‘the female Brokeback Mountain’, but that would be to traduce the richness, singularity and command of Mona Fastvold’s beautifully executed and acted drama." [20]
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote "The film offers a small bit of emotional rescue at its very end—a graceful tribute to the escapes of memory and fantasy—but by then the dourness of its conclusions has blotted out any rounder sense of meaning. There is not much world to come, after all." [21] Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times wrote "Waterston and Kirby are both superb at creating characters whose attraction must be shown to grow by degrees, without overt admission. Affleck and Abbott, too, navigate a tricky dynamic, playing men who perhaps lack an understanding of their own compassion or brutishness. The use of film stock, natural light, narrow compositions and an offbeat, clarinet-heavy score by Daniel Blumberg all contribute to the sense of a story dusted off from the past." [22] Kate Stables of Sight and Sound wrote "Director Mona Fastvold’s delicate, tragedy-tinged period lesbian romance, set in mid 19th-century rough-country New York State, is filled with these sensuous grace notes, as the childless women’s closeness through the harsh rural winter tips into a yearning affair." [23] Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly wrote "the immersive look of the film, with its strikingly unadorned landscapes and dim-lit interiors, casts a spell". [24]
Erica Abeel of The Arts Fuse wrote "It’s interesting that films about female desire directed by women tend to avoid the explicitness of like-themed stories by male directors. Consider the raw sexuality in Blue is the Warmest Color by Abdellatif Kechiche, a film trailed by accusations from the actresses of exploitation. World alludes to physical love only in a quick flashback leavened by a sense of loss. I came away from the film with a haunting sense of lives long gone that continue to resonate across a century. But, overall, the tale unscrolls at a remove that alienates viewers more than it reels them in." [25] Elizabeth Weitzman of TheWrap wrote "it’s the authentically-felt pioneer environment that sets this movie apart, hardship and survival seeping into every inch of the frame." [26] Mary Beth McAndrews of Film School Rejects wrote "the film’s ending holds The World To Come back from standing out as a unique queer period piece. Tragedies aside, this is a film that will sweep you away to a beautiful yet harsh time where happiness came and left as quickly as a summer rain." [27]
In June 2025, IndieWire ranked the film at number 69 on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)". [28]
