Cotrona, the film tells the story of a social outcast who becomes obsessed with a pretty wealthy girl and begins stealing drugs for her friends to be near her.

Poor and lacking the social confidence of his classmates, at graduation he finds himself attracted to Sara Weller (Lizzy Caplan), who is part of a close-knit quartet of drug users that includes her boyfriend Troy (Jonathon Trent) and their friends Lucas (D.J.

However, after the group learn that he works part-time at a pharmacy doing delivery, they bring them into his world for the summer, in exchange for his stealing prescription drugs for them.

Jonah's mother, Sandra (Daryl Hannah), is too busy working multiple jobs to try to keep up appearances, to try to deal with her son's sudden change in behavior.

The film is ended with Lucas, Erin, and the private investigator walking into the bathroom and seeing Jonah's dead body with Sara frightened in the corner.

[3] Variety's Justin Chang called the film "darkly compelling" and a "smartly acted and strikingly confident feature", he praised the cinematography and screenplay.

He also praised Caplan's performance as Sara and felt Cotrona was "explosively charismatic", but he criticized the film's ending as "repetitive and overwrought" and found that the final moments "played like a cheap stunt".

[4] While Seattle Times reviewer Ted Fry praised the film as a "small, earnest and generally well-acted movie [that] infuses a horrifying sense of realism in the sexual and drug-fueled behavior of kids who believe they are mature beyond their years", he also criticized the characters as being hard to identify or sympathize with and found Johah's eventual actions to be "unpleasantly erratic".

[6] The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Bill White gave the film a grade of "D" and stated that Lester "aim[ed] for an edgy teen melodrama and finishe[d] with something less than a spineless horror flick".