Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that "the film cuts back and forth between scenes of their childhood and adolescence, it evokes their misery and isolation with a feverish intensity that recalls scenes from Hitchcock and De Palma".
Stephen Holden of The New York Times described the movie as alternating between scenes from their youth and teenage years, creating a sense of their suffering and loneliness that is comparable to those found in films by Hitchcock and De Palma.