Box office The film made $3.7 million from 2,277 theaters in its opening weekend, finishing fifth at the box office. The film set a new opening weekend record for
IFC, surpassing the opening weekend of
Late Night with the Devil, which grossed $2.8 million a year earlier.
Critical response Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while 44% of those surveyed by
PostTrak said they would definitely recommend it. Meagan Navarro of
Bloody Disgusting gave the film a rating of 3 out of 5 and wrote, "
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil director Eli Craig tackles the mostly faithful adaptation with aplomb, bringing the right balance of gore and comedy for a zippy, lean slasher." In his review for
Exclaim!, Wesley McLean rated the movie a 7/10, citing its mixture of traditional slasher elements with an attempted "subversion of the genre," adding that its strengths come when it "branches off into fun and novel ideas." Jake Wilson of
The Sydney Morning Herald gave it 2.5 stars out of 5, writing, "There’s nothing wrong with using a teen horror movie to comment on the generation gap, class relations and the decline of the US manufacturing sector. But it helps if the plot isn’t so cluttered with half-realised ideas that the climax winds up being cluttered further with long speeches explaining what the message was meant to be. It’s a shame because Craig is a talented filmmaker, with a knack for discreetly stylish tracking shots and jolting edits and for working with actors to develop characters that undercut genre stereotypes."
Owen Gleiberman of
Variety gave the film a negative review and wrote, "The film, in its trivial way, exudes a dyspeptic downer vibe, the result of everyone in it being so testy and unpleasant." Benjamin Lee, reviewing for
The Guardian, gave the movie two stars out of five, praising the "neat and genuinely surprising queer twist" but describing Frendo as "just some clown, never given all that much to separate him from the many other horror clowns we know better" and the other characters as "weakly etched and indistinguishable". He summarizes the movie as "pretty standard late night fodder".
Kevin Maher of
The Times gave it one out of five stars, writing, "The characters are mostly loathsome and simply reduced to treading narrative water before the inevitable decapitation. Quinn is tiresome and clueless, while the final big reveal of the all-consuming murder motivation makes little sense. It’s like, I dunno, an awful Eighties slasher movie."
Accolades ==References==