The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)

stranger prey at night poster 2018 movie
6.0 Overall Score
Story: 6/10
Acting: 7/10
Visuals: 8/10

Some well crafted horror sequences

Story is lacking

Movie Info

Movie Name:   The Strangers:  Prey at Night

Studio:  The Fyzz Facility

Genre(s):   Horror

Release Date(s):  March 9, 2018

MPAA Rating:  R

strangers prey at night killer mask

We’re fashionable and deadly

Kinsey (Bailee Madison) is headed off to boarding school against her wishes and causing a strain in the family. When her parents Mike and Cindy (Martin Henderson and Christina Hendricks) plan a stop at a relative’s trailer at a secluded summer trailer park, Kinsey and her brother Luke (Lewis Pullman) discover that isolation can lead to terror. People have moved into the trailer park and are out to hunt whoever they can find…and Kinsey and her family are their newest toys!

Directed by Johannes Roberts, The Strangers: Prey at Night is a horror thriller survival film. Following the successful 2008 film The Strangers, the movie was met with mixed reviews and a much smaller box office return.

The Strangers had a great set-up. It was a mix of something like Straw Dogs where people are fighting for survival and an almost blatant rip off of the French movie Ils (at least in basic story). The Strangers: Prey at Night does a little to improve on The Strangers but also falls into typical horror movies. A ******spoiler alert****** is in effect for the rest of the movie

strangers prey at night pool scene lewis pullman

Worst game of Marco Polo…

The story for the film kicks off with a murder but then goes into domestic mode who a while to set-up the family. In the film, you know that one or both of the kids are safe because it is the type of movie with a kid hero which is in opposition to the original movie where you felt the characters were always doomed. With arguably the most famous of the stars (Christina Hendricks) being bumped off first, the movie does put more question into who will live or die. Unlike The Strangers which featured the “villains” really not paying for their crimes, this movie has the family getting the upper hand…which was a nice surprise (I just wish that one of the female killers had put up a better fight).

Bailee Madison rises as “the final girl” in this movie and had previously battled horrors in the remake of the Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark in 2010. She’s solid as the teen, but it feels like the movie should have kept her front and center instead of people guessing who the survive was going to be. Lewis Pullman almost plays the role of Deputy Dewey by surviving multiple attacks on him through the course of the movie and pulling out alive. The real push of the movie are “the Strangers” played by Emma Bellomy, Damian Maffeli, and Lea Enslin…but it felt like Damian Maffeli gets to have the most personality.

strangers prey at night burning truck ending bailee madison

Christine 2….Christine the Truck

The movie does do a good job with jumps. The original Strangers had a more claustrophobic feel to it when the characters essentially trapped in the home and trying to keep the killers out. Here, the characters are free to run around the abandoned trailer park…but I never got much of a sense of how big the area was (and like many horror movies why running off into the woods wasn’t the better all-around option for characters).

The Strangers: Prey at Night has both positive and negative things going for it. While I like that that it feels more like an ’80s slasher movie, it loses a bit of its originality in that sense (but many of its viewers might not be as versed in ’80s horror). I think in a lot of ways that it does feel like a “new” movie and not rehash of the previous Strangers, but people who really liked the previous film may miss the creeping horror vibe…but it really could turn into an ’80s horror film if all the characters are resurrected for a third film.

Related Links:

The Strangers (2008)

Author: JPRoscoe View all posts by

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