Linklater's control seems all but invisible here. But this kind of stylistic lucidity can only be the result of determined calculation and planning. The kind of happy accidents he captures don't come about by accident.
Slacker is not always so purposefully creepy, but it's often as darkly funny; none of its characters is what you'd call normal, but the film's off-kilter view is such that they seem utterly in tune with their odd lives and odder times. [29 May 1992, p.5]
The members of Mr. Linklater's cast, most of whom are non-professionals, are so amazingly effective that it's hard to believe they didn't make up their own lunacies.
Aside from preserving these folks for a presumably grateful posterity and convincingly depicting Austin as an open-air lunatic asylum, Slacker does not offer much to anyone who likes to stay awake.