Harry Knowles’ Fantastic Fest closed last night with a (badly kept) secret screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. We weren’t there, so let’s go straight to those who were. I’ll update this post as more folks weigh in. Suffice it to say, at this point, the first negative word will be news.

• Mike D’Angelo [via GreenCine Daily, via Twitter]: “Not much more than formal mastery and a ferocious Day-Lewis turn, but hey, that’s plenty.”
• Marjorie Baumgarten for Variety: “There Will Be Blood was indeed an unusual choice to close out this year’s Fantastic Fest, as Alamo Drafthouse Cinema founder and host Tim League was the first to admit. Though the film hardly belongs to the science fiction, fantasy, animation, and crime genres that attendees had been snacking on all week, League attested in his introduction that the film is undeniably “fantastic.” [...] However, it took Ain’t It Cool News‘ Harry Knowles to point out during the Q&A that Plainview was the “best monster” he had seen all week. Anderson responded that Dracula was in his thoughts as he was writing the screenplay. “There Will Be Blood” indeed.”
• An anonymous text messager, also via Variety: “Easily one of the best movies of the year.”
• Matt Dentler: “God Bless P.T. Anderson, for making his fifth consecutive slam dunk. I’m just so stunned and impressed and shaken by this film.”
• Jeffrey Wells, quoting reader Dan Brown: “‘I know the film won’t be well received by everyone. The two and a half-hour running time might be off-putting for Middle American styrofoams but I was really into the movie right from the start.’ The most interesting sounding aspect, he adds, is that ‘the first 15 to 18 minutes of the film are dialogue-free.’”
• Scott Weinberg at Cinematical: “It’s more than a ‘departure’ for the director; it’s a monumental display of ‘evolution’ that’ll wow the established fans and impress a helluva lot more new ones. This is a dark, compelling and effortlessly engrossing film, one bolstered by a lead performance that ranks among the very best of Lewis’ impressive career.”
• John DeFore at The Hollywood Reporter: “Director Anderson’s critics might not know what to do with this picture, which has none of the attention-grabbing flourishes of earlier films — no hailstorms of frogs or deus ex machina pianos here. The closest it gets to self-conscious showiness is its closing scene, a confrontation as memorably strange as the fireworks-popping, “Jessie’s Girl”-belting drug deal in Boogie Nights.”
• Peter Martin at Twitch: “In several important ways, though, There Will Be Blood was the perfect film to close the festival. First, it is a major stride forward by Anderson. Not only has he left behind the present-day San Fernando Valley suburban milleau of his last three films, he has greatly sharpened his storytelling abilities and broadened his visual palette. Second, this is a tale in which the characters fully embrace their emotions, resulting in sometimes over the top behavior that’s familiar to anyone even mildly acquainted with genre fare. Third, the film features a monstrously entertaining performance by Daniel Day Lewis, embodying a man quietly hellbent on achieving success, and you can never have too many monsters at Fantastic Fest.”

See also our spoileriffic report from the Blood preview at Telluride.