THE 31 MOVIES OR HORROR-WEEN: THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT (2018) **

I don’t know why it took ten years to make a sequel to The Strangers.  It wasn’t exactly great or anything, but its low-fi concept seemingly lends itself to unrelated sequel after unrelated sequel.  Maybe the lukewarm Strangers:  Prey at Night is proof that coming up with another similar scenario is harder than it looks.

I was looking forward to Prey at Night primarily because it gave Christina Hendricks an opportunity to have a leading role.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but… Let’s just say at least she’s top-billed.

Hendricks and her family are on their way to take her teenage daughter to boarding school.  They stop to spend the night at an abandoned trailer park owned by some relatives.  If you saw The Strangers, you know they’re about to be visited by a gang of home invaders wearing creepy masks who delight in tormenting the family before picking them off one by one.

The difference this time out is that the characters are in unfamiliar surroundings.  Because of that, it feels less like a violation of the home and more of a straightforward slasher.  That feeling is compounded by the fact that this time there are four potential victims instead of two, so there isn’t as much endless toying with the characters (or the audience).  That doesn’t exactly translate into scares though.  

The effectiveness of the killers’ stalking ability will probably depend on how creepy you find their masks.  Also, they don’t do much other than stand there, and when they finally do attack, they mostly just slice and dice.  There is at least one memorable jump scare, but it’s not enough to put this one into the win column.

Director Johannes Roberts films things with a stylish flair.  He gives us a lot of fog-drenched streets and gloomy exteriors, but that doesn’t exactly mask the fact that there really isn’t much of a movie here.  He also directed 47 Meters Down, which might explain the film’s extended underwater sequence.

His overuse of ‘80s songs like “Kids in America”, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” is marginally effective I guess.  Not only are the characters fighting for their lives, they have to struggle to survive while Air Supply blares in the background.  Personally, having to suffer through listening to Air Supply should count as torture all by itself.

AKA:  The Strangers 2.

Are you craving more reviews of horror sequels?  Well, you can read all about them in my latest book, The Bloody Book of Horror, which is currently on sale at Amazon.  Get your copy HERE.