Metacritic reviews

Faults is a strangely funny, often eerie accomplishment, and it’s a testament to why people like us tend to call first features like this “promising.”

Stearns saddles himself with a touch more plot than he needs, and some of the film’s late-game twists are more satisfying than others, but Faults never loses sight of the one thing Ansel can’t see: Free will may come cheap, but most people still can’t afford it.

While Faults glances at the narcissism of cult leaders, its most penetrating investigation is into the root emptiness within disciples, the desperate hunger to relinquish personal initiative.

The film obliquely addresses its narrative mysteries through the conversational cracks of two people in enforced proximity.

He’s (Riley Stearns) fashioned a movie that undergoes a slow, captivating metamorphosis, scene by scene, though who’s the caterpillar and who’s the cocoon remains unclear until the very end.

Faults is a richly-textured movie that concerns the weird space between thinking you know what you're doing, and actually knowing what you're doing.

Stearns directs with a slow-burning intensity that becomes more unsettling the deeper Ansel goes into his task, and the more it becomes apparent he doesn’t have an easy way out.

As the down-on-his-luck Roth, Orser gives the darkly comic performance of a man barely able to keep his head above water.

The wan drama is enlivened by bursts of black comedy, some bits more effective than others, and though it ultimately disappoints, there's promise in the understated creepiness of Riley Stearns' debut feature.

Mind control is a topic that should be fascinating, but it’s utterly forgettable in this disappointing, low-budget indie.