Outbreak received mixed reviews from critics. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 59% of 63 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.8 out of 10. The consensus states: ”A frustratingly uneven all-star disaster drama, Outbreak ultimately proves only mildly contagious and leaves few lasting side effects.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 20 critic reviews, indicating ”generally favorable reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of ”A-” on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars, calling Outbreak‘s premise ”one of the great scare stories of our time, the notion that deep in the uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking, and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen.” Rita Kempley of The Washington Post also enjoyed the film‘s plot: ”Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen‘s rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability.”

David Denby wrote for New York magazine that although the opening scenes were well-done, ”somewhere in the middle ... Outbreak falls off a cliff” and becomes ”lamely conventional”. Janet Maslin of The New York Times also found the film‘s subject compelling but its treatment ineffective: ”The film‘s shallowness also contributes to the impression that no problem is too thorny to be solved by movie heroics.”

The film‘s scientific liberties have been criticized, especially compared to the realism of the 2011 film Contagion. Implausibilities include the virus taking only an hour, rather than days, to reproduce itself; the synthesis of the cure taking less than a minute, rather than many months; and the injection of the cure producing immediate improvement