The movie received positive reviews. It was screened at the 12th International Critics' Week at Cannes Film Festival, and James Murray of the "Amsterdam News" hailed it as "the most important Black produced film since Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." Writing in 2014, critic Scott Foundas described the film as a "landmark 1973 indie that used vampirism as an ingenious metaphor for black assimilation, white cultural imperialism and the hypocrisies of organized religion." In 2021, filmmaker and Sundance Institute programmer Adam Piron describes frequently rewatching the film for being "ahead of its time and is still beyond our own." Piron interprets Gunn's approach in this way: "Moving back and forth between quiet interpersonal exchanges and vivid actions prompted by guilt and trauma over the deaths of the two title characters’ spouses and their desire to reconnect to the Christian church, "Ganja &amp; Hess" defies a traditional sense of linear structure. It offers not a plot but, rather, a portrayal of the characters’ interactions with one another while trying to live new lives."