24
Metascore
8 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50Miami HeraldBill CosfordMiami HeraldBill CosfordMaximum Overdrive is the classic botch. Good idea, nice effects, bad pacing, porous script, no punch...Too bad. As usual, the premise has promise. [26 July 1986, p.C1]
- Maximum Overdrive offers a variation on what has become a hopelessly hackneyed theme -- technology as monster. As long as King is tinkering with his crazed machines, the film sustains a certain amount of ominous tension, but as soon as the author turns his attention to his actors, the movie's slender storyline goes limp. It's dreary to the max.
- For the most part, [King] has taken a promising notion - our dependence on our machines - and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups.
- 30Time Out LondonTime Out LondonA loud, obnoxious, single-idea schlocker...There's carnage galore, but minimal interest. King himself described it as a 'wonderful moron picture', and he was half-right.
- 25Chicago TribuneRick KoganChicago TribuneRick KoganA mess of a movie, a no chills nightmare about what happens to a group of rubes at a Carolina truck stop when the machines go nuts. [29 July 1986, p.3]
- 20TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineMAXIMUM OVERDRIVE doesn't work on any level. As a comedy it's obvious and asinine, as a horror film it's simply not scary, and as an action film it's a bore.
- 10Washington PostPaul AttanasioWashington PostPaul AttanasioWatching Maximum Overdrive is like sitting alongside a 3-year-old as he skids his Tonka trucks across the living room floor and says "Whee!" except on a somewhat grander scale...It's hard to even imagine a movie so impeccably devoid of everything a movie ought to include. [29 July 1986, p.C2]