The Horror Show
The Strangers: Prey at Night
by Johannes Roberts
The follow-up to the brilliant 2008 home invasion horror The Strangers hit the cinemas earlier last month in an unsuccessful effort to replicate the scares. In a no-nonsense 85-minute thriller, Bryan Bertino’s original screenplay followed a couple, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, who find themselves terrorized and tortured by a group of masked killers while they’re spending the night in a secluded cabin.
What made The Strangers disturbingly chilling was its delicate buildup; a rather simple narrative which turned a very familiar set-up into an eerie and ultimately gory story. Ten years later, Bertino returns as a co-screenwriter leaving the directorial work to Johannes Roberts, who tries to bring back the chills that made the first part so grimly memorable.
In 2018, the story follows a family of four; dad Mike (Martin Henderson), mother Cindy (Christina Hendricks), daughter Kinsey (Bailee Madison) and son Luke (Lewis Pullman). The family is on its way to a trailer park to spend the weekend, before sending Kinsey off to a boarding school. Her turbulent adolescent years and implied troublemaking recent past called for drastic measures and her parents’ decision to send her away further fuels a lot of tension among the family.
As they reach their destination, we are re-introduced to a familiar setting, where a group of three killers with iconic masks hunt and torment each family member one by one. Unlike the 2008 edition, the violence starts quite early in The Strangers: Prey at Night. And while this is a great asset in a horror movie, it can do more damage than good if not executed skillfully.
Although we can assume that the movie is about a group of heartless, cold-blooded murderers, Roberts focuses way too much on unreasonable gore. And even though this sequel acts perfectly as a standalone film and there is no need to know the early happenings to follow the story of the killings, it yearns for something more than just “why not”.
On a positive note, the performances are very strong, but even they are not enough to breathe some tension into a bunch of redundant jump scares. Ten years is a long gap for a sequel and the once spine-chilling story of a gruesome trio of killers turns into a far-fetched battle for survival. To be frank, I’d rather spend these 85 minutes re-watching the original movie.
Maria Kriva, HMS
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