Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times gave the film two out of five stars, concluding it is "an unflattering but somewhat forced look at the wild side of teen life that at times seems dangerously tolerant of unrestrained teen behaviour." Associate professor Donna Lee Brien of Central Queensland University said that when shown outside Australia, the film lacks the "poignant and powerful narrative support of Leigh's tragedy" and was deemed by critics to be "shallow and clichéd". Australian novelist and critic Robert Drewe gave a positive review, praising the performance of Breuls, the cinematography by Martin McGrath, and director Steven Vidler's choice of such a controversial subject for a first film. Upon noting that the filmmakers deliberately insisted that their characters be portrayed as different from the actual people involved in the Leigh Leigh murder as possible, Drewe said the film is "asking a lot of Australian audiences to expunge reality from their memories", though he concluded that the film should be "compulsory viewing for all Australian teenagers." Rob Lowing from The Sun-Herald noted that the film belonged to a slew of Australasian films that focused on middle class life and ultimately gave the film 3½ stars out of 4, stating, "if you went to see Romper Stomper, Metal Skin, Idiot Box or Once Were Warriors, this gritty, punchy social drama ably fits into that class." In her book Who Killed Leigh Leigh?, Kerry Carrington, a criminologist and prominent researcher of Leigh's murder, had both criticism and praise for the film. She praised it for dispelling "the myth" that sexual violence is confined to one social class, for illustrating how boys model their sexual conduct on their fathers' treatment of women, and how the culture of sex segregation in workplaces can carry over into the public life of a town, exacerbating sexist beliefs and behaviours. She criticised the film, however, for the "strong impression" it makes that ineffectual mothers are part of the underlying problem and for several differences between Leigh's murder and the film that she considered to be disrespectful to Leigh's memory, in particular the film's "Hollywood ending". Donna Lee Brien stated that just as the filmmakers attempted to distance themselves from Leigh's murder, the city of Newcastle attempted to distance itself from Blackrock. A 1999 feature in The Sydney Morning Herald discussing cinematic production in Newcastle mentioned everything from Mel Gibson's 1977 debut film Summer City to a