[1] A couple in a failing marriage recall what led up to their biggest dispute.

The Prefab People received generally positive reviews from critics, and has been ranked with Tarr's best early works.

[2] Writing for Village Voice, Michael Atkinson called the film an "unrelenting, smell-the-sour-breath portrait of a blue-collar marriage dissolving under pressure from Communist-era poverty, masculine inadequacy, and restless depression.

"[3] Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader argued it was "the best of his early forays into Cassavetes-style social realism.

"[4] In 2003, web-based film critic Jeremy Heilman called The Prefab People the best of [Tarr's] early works because it achieves such a degree of intimacy that its lack of ostentatious filmmaking never impedes its ability to observe its characters.