The Strangers: Prey At Night (Review)

The Strangers: Prey at Night is Disappointing Despite it’s Best Efforts.

I was a huge fan of the first The Strangers movie. I mean, the whole concept of people being evil for no reason had a huge pull for me. Especially because most horror movies obsess over the “why” and evil doesn’t really need an answer to that. Needless to say, I was excited about the sequel. However, at no point did it manage to live up to the original. Frankly, the two films are very different from each other in the most disappointing ways possible.

Early on I noticed that the cinematography for The Strangers: Prey at Night was claustrophobic. Nearly suffocating when it came it came to frame composition. Every shot is so tight to the protagonist, that it had to force the villains into the background just to raise the tension. I can respect the sentiment of the film, but it’s something that grows old really quickly after it abuses the old depth of field thrill where the villain turns out to be standing in the distance behind the heroes. After all, the first movie was so focused on the victims that the villains became these forces of nature. They appeared out of nowhere and the toll they took was horrifying, to say the least

In The Strangers: Prey at Night, Of course, the classic masked figures are back, but they don’t seem nearly as sophisticated as they did in the original. In fact, the villains seem so much weaker than the first go around. In the original, they were stoic monsters that observed and then struck when it was least expected. This time around they were given actual lines. None of which made them seem all the more sinister, but instead revealed that there were humans behind those creepy masks. As much as humanizing characters might come in handy, it’s not something that makes these masked characters stalking the family in this movie any more effective as characters. In actuality, it undermines their sinister element.

Honestly, the best part of The Strangers: Prey at Night is the epic, 80’s soundtrack that has an almost neon feel to it. Which is weird because the movie is actually so dark that most of the time characters appear out of nowhere. An awesome throwback to 80’s cliches, but not one that modern audiences will enjoy unless they are true horror fans. After all, most of the 80’s slasher movies were based on the whole idea that there was no need for motives when it came to masked killers.

One of my favorite part of the original The Strangers movie was the fact that the whole incident came out of nowhere. There was no explanation, there was no reasoning, it was something that happened because the victim was home. The sequel though… Well, things got personal real quick on both sides. The entire film escalates before someone can call “cut” at the end of the first act. Both sides manage to draw blood in a record amount of time. After that, it’s a race for survival as teenagers take on experienced killers.

I won’t try to hide things from you, and I’m not about the spoilers. However, the bad guys in this movie are a far cry from the menacing creatures in the original. The Strangers: Prey at Night seems to try to humanize the villains in order to make them scarier. This though only manages to backfire and undermind their appeal as villains. I won’t say that the people in this movie didn’t put up a fight, but I think it was only possible because the baddies were so off their game. Maybe they’re just out of practice when it comes to terrorizing people just because they were home.

So, does The Strangers: Prey at Night live up to the original? Hardly, it’s a mess of a movie where the epic villains of the first film are forced to play by the heroes game this time around. There is barely any tension when it comes to the plot and the masked figures come off as goofy several times. Those killers that made everyone afraid to venture out to the country are gone. Now it’s just a trailer trash movie filled with trailer trash villains. The film also never manages to draw a connection to the first one. There’s no element tying them together and to make matters worse, it seems to have forgotten all of the elments that made the first one so good.

I really wanted to love The Strangers: Prey at Night, but the only moment that makes the movie worth it is when one of the crappy teens decides to stand his ground at a clubhouse pool (it’s in the trailer). Of course, it doesn’t turn out to be the best option for anyone involved, but it was a moment I could shout my support for. Overall though. The Strangers: Prey at Night is just another horror movie disappointment. I wanted so much from this movie, but it was was not the horror film I was hoping for this year. Here’s hoping April brings us something that will tickle my horror fancy.