Written by: Bryan Bertino & Ben Ketai
Starring: Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman, Damian Maffei
Rating: [1.5/5]
When crafting a sequel to such a singular film, some swings need to be taken in order to justify the existence of the new story. Something where the stakes get raised or it embraces a new approach to the story, which The Strangers: Prey at Night certainly tries to achieve but ends up delivering something very substandard even with the attempt to freshen things up.
Spending some time away at a trailer home, Mike (Martin Henderson) and Cincy (Christina Hendricks) take their kids along for some family bonding time. While there they hear a mysterious figure knock on their asking for someone not there. Soon the family sees three masked strangers arrive trying to kill them.
Following the incredible work done in The Strangers, our favorite randomly strange murderers have returned to hunt down another family just for the sake of it. An attempt to catch lightning in a bottle once again but this time taking on a different approach outside of one cabin but in a trailer park. Instead of relying on the extreme tension and patience utilized in the first feature, this sequel wants to make it more gory and with more action as these innocent individuals try to survive against these masked killers by actually fighting back. It presents a fresh new take but what arrives does nothing to entertain.
In this sequel, we get a different approach from the characters where they refuse to exist as sacrificial lambs to their wicked games and they fight back, which allows for some of the only redeemable moments of the feature. This mainly occurs in the pool scene involving Luke (Lewis Pullman) and the Man in the Mask (Damian Maffei). It certainly displays the flashier style of this particular filmmaker in the way the two tussle in the water. This entire sequence demonstrates the mortality of these masked individuals while also exhibiting how they’re literally gods walking amongst this poor family.
Killers in horror films typically have this strange supernatural ability to move very quickly and position themselves in places where they can scare the characters and the audience. Something we just accept as part of the game, but the lengths this feature goes in displaying the sheer omniscience of these killers astounds to a level where they literally have the lighting-quick speed of the Flash and refuse to die. They trade in the reality of the first film and seek to have these killers now have the ability to just be in one place in one second and then another before you blink an eye, which takes away from any grounding of this story.
For all of the style this feature tries to integrate into the story this feature just wants to exist as a straight-up slasher and therefore loses the ability to genuinely be scary. Each of these confrontations throughout the trailer park are just these characters defending themselves from the masked killers where no genuine fear exists for them. It all becomes about who wins in these battles but truly misses the mark of what made these characters so terrifying before. It did not appear in the way they killed the previous couple but rather in the psychological turmoil they put them through before taking care of the deed in such an unshowy manner. Instead, we just have the Man in the Mask swinging away with a big ol’ axe and we have these characters just trying to run away from them. Again, One can appreciate the effort in trying to do something different and I don’t want this review to fully be a comparison to the preceding film, but this one results in such a downgrade. These changes, while bold and intriguing, make for something quite inferior as a result.
Vastly disappointing in what we receive in this sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night just does not cut the mustard in delivering from the deviations it took from its preceding film. Something somehow achieving not being scary, exhilarating, entertaining, or exciting to watch. Just a complete misfire on all levels wasting Christina Hendricks in a role she deserves much better by leaving nothing really redeemable to take away from it other than some singular scenes that crafted something visually to the table. Everything else massively struggles and truly just does not measure up to its potential.
Films with Josh 
