This flawed but interesting Freudian melodrama spends about 70 minutes making points and the last 30 minutes losing them. — TV Guide

“Firstborn” has such a sudden and unnecessary breakdown that it almost makes you wonder how the movie’s ending was decided upon. Was there a final failure of will? The movie creates such an urgent situation, and fills it with such interesting characters, that when everything goes wrong at the end I felt more than disappointed, I felt cheated. — Roger Ebert