Bill Steele of IFC ranked the film the second-best entry in the series, after "Friday the 13th Part 2" (1981). Critic Kim Newman, in a 2000 review, awarded the film two out of five stars, referring to it as "a pallid "Halloween" rip-off, with a mediocre shock count and a botched ending...   As the bodies pile up amongst this testy crowd of horny teens, there remains a vacant hole were someone scary should be. In a strange way, this film stands unique amongst all slasher films as one where the killer is nearly intangible." Jeremiah Kipp of "Slant Magazine" reviewed the film in 2009, noting "a kind of minimalism at work, eschewing anything special in terms of mood, pacing, character, plot, and tension." Further commenting on the revelation of the killer's identity, Kipp observed: