[2] In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Hersh revealed that lead actress Jasmine Batchelor had never been in a film before, but her "level of craft was at this incredibly high caliber".

[4] Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com said the film has "many layers of complex, sensitive, and controversial subjects...but Hersh never lets it get preachy...he keeps the focus on the characters and their struggles to reconcile one of life's most painful dilemmas, the sometimes-vertiginous gap between what we think and what we feel".

He also argued that Hersh could have just taken the safe route of stereotypical tropes like "debating the rights of the disabled...the hierarchy of blacks vs. gays as societal underclasses", but instead he took this "garrulous but always psychologically plausible tale" and didn't let the film turn into that kind of "dramatized abstract...its characters may illuminate a number of thorny issues, but they never exist just to illustrate them".

Erbland noted that while this is Hersh's first feature film, he doesn't quite "stick the landing...but its path through thorny questions and seemingly unanswerable dilemmas makes for a thought-provoking, well-crafted watch".

[8] Glenn Kenny from The New York Times deviated from the mainstream view, saying the film "feels like the vexed progeny of an elevator pitch and an ethics advice column".

[10] The critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads: "Led by an outstanding performance from Jasmine Batchelor, The Surrogate probes the heart of a thorny dilemma with strength and sensitivity".