Critical Reception and Legacy (There Will Be Blood) There Will Be Blood

The film arrived to near-universal acclaim

There Will Be Blood premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin on September 29, 2007, and opened in limited release in New York and Los Angeles on December 26, 2007, before expanding wide on January 25, 2008. It holds a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 245 reviews and a score of 93 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim. (rottentomatoes, metacritic)

Dargis called it a consummate work of art

"The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic." — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times (2007)

Dargis placed Day-Lewis's performance at the center of the achievement, calling it "a thrilling performance, among the greatest I've seen — purposefully alienating and brilliantly located at the juncture between cinematic realism and theatrical spectacle." Her review established the critical consensus that the film worked simultaneously as historical epic, character study, and formal experiment.

Schickel declared it one of the most original American films ever made

"One of the most wholly original American movies ever made." — Richard Schickel, TIME (2007)

Schickel called Day-Lewis's performance "genius (and I use that word advisedly)" and highlighted the bowling alley finale as evidence of the actor's unmatched commitment. His review positioned the film as a departure not just from Anderson's earlier work but from the conventions of American period drama entirely.

Denby praised the film's austere grandeur

"An enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic... austerely magnificent." — David Denby, The New Yorker (2008)

Denby compared Anderson's achievement to "the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford" and described Day-Lewis's performance as one that "makes one think of Laurence Olivier at his most physically and spiritually audacious." His review acknowledged the film's strangeness — its long silences, its refusal of conventional pacing — as integral to its power rather than a flaw to be excused.

Ebert admired the film but withheld the highest praise

Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, praising Day-Lewis's vocal performance — "the voice of the oil man sounds made of oil, gristle and syrup. It is deep and reassuring, absolutely sure of itself, and curiously fraudulent" — while questioning whether the film fully achieved greatness. He noted "its lack of women" as a limitation and expressed reservations about treating it as an unqualified masterpiece. Ebert's review was notably more cautious than the dominant critical response, though he acknowledged the film's artistic ambition and Day-Lewis's extraordinary work. (rogerebert.com — 403 on fetch)

Some critics found the finale excessive

Not all responses were unqualified praise. Mick LaSalle critiqued scenes that "degenerate into burlesque," and several critics questioned whether the bowling alley confrontation — set decades after the main action and played at a pitch of grotesque comedy — undermined the film's earlier restraint. The debate over the finale became one of the defining critical conversations about the film: whether the ending is a structural collapse or a logical extension of everything that precedes it.

Awards and recognition

There Will Be Blood received eight Academy Award nominations at the 80th ceremony in February 2008 and won two: Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis and Best Cinematography for Robert Elswit. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Editing. (wikipedia)

Day-Lewis swept the major acting prizes, winning the BAFTA, the Golden Globe (Drama), the Screen Actors Guild award, and critics' circle prizes from Los Angeles, New York, and the National Society of Film Critics. The film itself won Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics and the Austin Film Critics Association.

At the box office, the film grossed $76.2 million worldwide against a $25 million production budget — a solid commercial performance for an austere, 158-minute drama with no conventional action sequences or romantic subplot. (wikipedia)

The film's legacy has grown steadily since release

In the years since its release, There Will Be Blood has risen in critical estimation to a point where it is regularly cited as one of the defining American films of the twenty-first century.

The BBC's 2016 poll of 177 international critics ranked it the third-greatest film of the twenty-first century. In 2017, New York Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis named it the best film of the century so far. The Guardian's 2019 panel ranked it the best twenty-first-century film outright. In 2025, The New York Times ranked it third on its updated best-of-century list, and Rolling Stone named it the best film of the century. The film also appears in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and Total Film ranked it third on their lifetime best list. The Writers Guild named the screenplay the seventh-best of the twenty-first century in 2021. (wikipedia)

Filmmakers Denis Villeneuve, Robert Eggers, Josh Safdie, and others have cited it among the century's finest works.