There needs to be a vision, an ambition to make something good and memorable. Ida Red, unfortunately, seems to fall into the trap of emulating better crime dramas instead of trying to stand out on the merits of its own story.

If this kind of genre stuff is your cinematic meat, and you’re properly enamored of any of the principal cast members, Swab has enough directorial energy to keep the proceedings watchable at the least.

Glenn Kenny

RogerEbert.com

Here, no one seems capable of envisaging even the most immediate consequences of their increasingly vicious actions, and so where “Ida Red” wants us to thrill to the idea of criminality as almost a genetic inheritance, a trait carried down a bloodline like blue eyes or freckles, in fact, all it really suggests is that this family might be really dumb, and actually quite bad at crime.

Jessica Kiang

The Playlist