The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck criticized Unplanned as "proselytizing agitprop" comparable to a "basic cable television movie in its mediocre production values and subpar performances".[43] Similarly, Owen Gleiberman of Variety said the film "isn't good drama but it's effective propaganda" [44] and The A.V. Club's Vadim Rizov noted that "[while it] has greater technical finesse than its foundational forebears...[,] there's not a single scene that speaks to characters with lives outside their streamlined narrative function; they're performers in a parable traced over a Chick tract, filmed with a bland competence at odds with the true perversity of the material".[45]