On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "After Hours" holds an approval rating of 89% based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 7.64/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Bursting with frantic energy and tinged with black humor, "After Hours" is a masterful – and often overlooked – detour in Martin Scorsese's filmography." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating "universal acclaim".