 Reviews for Skin & Bone were decidedly mixed. The New York Times called it a "bleak, disjointed movie" that "often comes across as if it had been planned like a pornographic feature." Director Lewis is praised, however, for "effectively mix [ing] us up as to what's real and what isn't." Bright Lights Film Journal had stronger words of praise for the film, calling it "intense [and] sometimes unsettling" with a "conceptual richness and mocking wit," while also noting the "element of genuine pathos [that] runs beneath the sardonic wit and brutal, sometimes lethal sex."
