The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)

[Chucky]

The Strangers: Prey At Night does not really do anything to reinvent the slasher genre, it just goes balls out for stalk and slash with its open environment, holding back very few punches. Its retro-based soundtrack and few noticeable homages to older movies, such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, should hearken you decades back to when the slasher genre was once booming.

Have you managed to catch this movie yet?

[Jigsaw]

A good friend of mine, and a rather big fan of the genre, gave this film a pretty negative review, so given your positive review, I'm moderately interested to see how I'd feel on it.

Not that I'm rushing out to see it any time soon.

[Chucky]

Well hey, that's what this site is all about with the ratings comparisons and all. With the new design, I am going to flesh out the rating comparisons feature and make it more in-depth so you can whittle it down to even sub-genre's like slasher movies in this case. So then you can align your taste in slasher movies with others. 

[Shadow]

DISCLAIMER: I've never actually seen any of the previous movie, so if this is somehow connected to the it (outside of the masks, as far as I can tell) it's news to me. Therefore it may not just be possible, but likely, that I say more stupid things than I usually would.

The Strangers: Prey at Night takes place (I assume) after the original film. We get to know our main characters: Cindy and Mike, the mother and father, whom we really don't get very much of a read on as characters (gee, I wonder why). Followed by Kinsey the chain-smoking bitch, and eventually Luke the smartass jock. They have packed their bags and picked up Luke to go on a trip/send Kinsey to boarding school for being said chain-smoking bitch. Because the boarding school is so far away, they decide they are going to take a detour and visit some family in a trailer park. It's like they've never watched a horror movie in their lives.

When the family arrives at the trailer they are greeted by (I assume again) one of the killers, asking for someone named Tamara. This creeps out Cindy, so she sends the girl off. While this is happening, Mike is trying to convince Kinsey not to be such a chain-smoking bitch, but to no avail- she decides she needs to leave the trailer to "get some air," ironically enough.

Rather than leaving Kinsey out there to die by herself, Cindy and Mike send Luke out to go die with her as well. Luke eventually finds Kinsey and after a heart to heart they decide it best to B&E into a random trailer and drink their booze. That is until they are scared shitless by literally the most useless German Shepherd I've ever seen in my life. They soon discover that the trailer belongs to Uncle Marvin, the family they were meant to visit. How do they know this? Because Uncle Marvin is everywhere in the bedroom, naturally.

Mike and Cindy eventually find the kids, with the kids explaining that Uncle Marvin is dead and that they definitely didn't steal his booze. In perfect logic, Mike declares that Cindy and Kinsey need to go back to the trailer by themselves, in the middle of the night, while Mike and Luke go Scooby-Squading. And away we go.

As Cindy and Kinsey get back to the trailer they discover that all their phones are smashed up. Because who bothers to carry their cell phones around in the middle of the night, in a place they are unfamiliar with? Cindy tries one of the phones, but it's from T-Mobile so she gets no service. They are then promptly attacked by the girl that wears the weeb mask.

Cindy and Kinsey lock themselves up in the restroom and ask the girl to go away. Because that will work. As the pair try to escape Cindy tries pushing Kinsey out of the vent in the restroom; but since Kinsey has weak lungs from all the chain-smoking she only gets up after her mom is caught and promptly stuck from behind. 

Meanwhile Mike and Luke find the body of Uncle Marvin, followed by discovering the dude that's too cheap to buy an actual fucking mask. Mike grabs Uncle Marvin's revolver and they make their escape to their trailer, only to find Kinsey missing and Cindy dead. Mike and Luke take off in the car to find Kinsey, but are attacked by slasher deus ex machina and crash into another trailer. Luke makes his escape while Mike is skewered in the car- and eventually skewered a second time by Gunnysackface.

While Luke might have escaped to find Kinsey, The Strangers find her first. After a game of cat and mouse she is eventually pinned in another trailer by Weeb Girl, only to be rescued by Luke. After all of this, Kinsey finally begins to realize that being a chain-smoking bitch does not pay very good dividends, and laments to Luke. It doesn't take long for the pair to be found, though, and Luke needs to lay the smackdown on some bitches. He fights off and kills Kabuki Barbie to Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', but is promptly shivved by Gunnysackface. Best scene in the movie, period, and now probably one of my favorite scenes in any of my recently watched films.

Kinsey hides Luke and flees to find the police, but since police are always useless in horror movies he is quickly killed, leaving Kinsey to go two-vs-one in the final showdown of the movie. She discovers her inner-Ripley and saves the day via shotgun and gasoline. In the end, we see Kinsey and Luke in the hospital- she can't hold her cup of water because now she has PTSD.

And with that we have our movie. Where to begin? The plot is really rather simple- I'd expect nothing less from a good ol' horror slasher. Though they somehow managed to take such a simple plot and stretch it out for an hour and a half, while also making it seem like it flied by. Props for that. They also did really well at the suspense-factor in the movie- you knew what was coming, but it still left you waiting for it.

The characters were rather 2D; but again, I'd expect nothing less from a slasher. The acting was decent for what it was and what they were given to work with, so credit goes there. I would say, though, that if they were looking for us to feel some sort of connection with the family (outside of a tally for body count), it likely fell flat due to the aforementioned 2Dness of the characters.  The action and gore played out pretty well, too; though since the movie was fairly dark throughout, that might have helped make it a bit easier to manage.

And now the big part. The soundtrack. Maybe I'm just a sucker for 80s music and never really realized it, but the various songs that they were using throughout the movie really meshed well with whichever scene they were playing out in. It took what would normally be an average scene in any other movie with the "spooky music" and really amped it up. The previously mentioned pool scene really is the pinnacle of that, though the entire scene down to the lighting was really great.

The movie itself was decent, nothing super special (even factoring the soundtrack) but definitely something that could be popped in as a time waster while you're cooking dinner, doing chores, etc. Maybe have some friends over and give it a repeat. Also, as an aside- I did dig the old-timey font that they used for the title and credits at the beginning and end of the movie; it was a nice touch.

Overall, while I say the movie was 'decent' I do think I enjoyed it more than is merited, not sure why.

7/10

[Chucky]

Good review. Y'know, you should add it to the actual movie page (minus your play-by-play of the events). 

http://www.fight-evil.com/movies/view.php?id=123

[Shadow]

Noted- I completely forgot about that part!

[Chucky]

If my error handling code is working correctly, you'd probably also be seeing an error message on any movie page or movie database index page which tells you that you still need to add your rating for those movies. You've reviewed them but you also need to separately rate the movie as well, then it would should up on the homepage as a new review.

[Shadow]

Ah, I saw the message but thought maybe it was a bug or something. The movie score matched my review score so I thought it factored that in automatically.

Fixed.

[Chucky]

The new upgrade should be able to eliminate the need to score it twice like that but for now, with the current design, that's how it works. Yet again another small issue that annoyed me that I should get rid of soon enough.

[Jigsaw]

Ended up liking this one a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would. Still somewhat shocked.