Metacritic reviews

Not merely the best of Arnold's classic sci-fi movies of the '50s, but one of the finest films ever made in that genre.

The most unpretentious and poignant sci-fi film of them all.

Whilst paranoid in a very 1950's way and a little downbeat at times this is very enjoyable.

Pulp sci-fi classic.

A campy premise taken to unthinkable heights. There are the requisite battles with spiders and housecats, but mostly the increasingly diminutive hero is introspective, turning his predicament into a treatise on the human condition. [07 Nov 2003]

Classic low-budget '50s sci-fi thriller, brilliantly scripted by Richard Matheson from his novel. [01 Sep 2006, p.C7]

It's a lot more interesting than its source, thanks to the special effects and Jack Arnold's taut, no-nonsense direction.

Director Jack Arnold works up the chills for maximum effect.

B-budget science-fiction and simple stuff, but with more consistency and logic than usual, and with some rather amusing trick photography.

Unless a viewer is addicted to freakish ironies, the unlikely spectacle of Mr. Williams losing an inch of height each week, while his wife, Randy Stuart, looks on helplessly, will become tiresome before Universal has emptied its lab of science-fiction clichés.