"Variety" noted that the film "shamelessly from "Carrie" and any number of gruesome exploitationers pic [from a story by Robert Gunza ("sic") Jr. manages to score a few horrific points amid a number of sagging moments." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" gave the film a middling review, writing: ""Prom Night", the Canadian film that opened yesterday at the Loews State 2 and other theaters, is a comparatively genteel hybrid, part shock melodrama, like "Halloween," and part mystery, though it's less a whodunit than a who's-doing-it." He also praised the film's restrained violence, writing that director Lynch "chooses to underplay the bloody spectacle. This isn't to say that there aren't some sticky moments, including one not especially convincing beheading, but that more often than not the camera cuts away, or the screen goes discreetly gray, before the audience is drenched in gore. This may or may not be the reason that the audience with which I saw the film yesterday booed at the end." Jack Mathews of the "Detroit Free Press" also drew comparisons to "Halloween" and "Carrie", though deeming it "not as effective as either."