Box office Single White Female debuted at No. 2 at the US box office on its opening weekend behind
Unforgiven, and grossed $48 million at the box office in the United States and Canada, Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four with the comment, "No genre is beyond redemption or beneath contempt, and here the slasher genre is given its due with strong performances and direction."
Hal Hinson of
The Washington Post wrote "Though Schroeder consciously evokes
Hitchcock's
Vertigo and
Polanski's ''
Rosemary's Baby, the movie conjures up less noble precursors as well, in particular The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Basic Instinct'' and other recent psycho femme thrillers. What's remarkable, though, is how engrossing the marriage of these high- and low-brow elements turns out to be. The tension between its content and its trashy form is precisely the key to its vitality. If it were any less cheap, it wouldn't have the same edgy, gut-twisting jolt." Jack Garner of
Gannett News Service praised the films visual appeal, writing "The cinematography of
Luciano Tovoli plays evocatively with shadows and light, and the production design of
Milena Canonero adds an important element to the mix – the large somewhat spooky New York apartment building that is as much a part of
Single White Female as the
Dakota was in ''Rosemary's Baby''." Bill Cosford of
The Miami Herald wrote that the film largely depends on thriller genre conventions, "from she's-not-who-she-says-she-is to the venerable evil twin," and that "everyone winds up the victim of circumstance." Cosford notes that it matters little because both Fonda and Leigh "are so engrossing to watch," writing that Leigh "draws her character's psychopathology out slowly, inexorably, and winds up scaring the hell out of us," and that Fonda "is nearly as good in the harder part—she's straight woman to Leigh's frothing
harpy—and utterly convincing as a savvy New Yorker."
Jennifer Jason Leigh won an
MTV Movie Award for Best Villain, and was also nominated for a
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress. The character of Hedy has been cited as an example of
borderline personality disorder. She suffers from a markedly disturbed sense of identity, and tries to remedy it by adopting the wholesome attributes of her roommate. It is implied that she feels a deep-seated emptiness, while her fear of
abandonment leads to drastic measures. ==Home media==