Way back, in the atmospheric, serial killer enshrouding, mists of time (aka. 2008), The Strangers was released in an attempt to deliver a stripped back, tension-filled, horror/thriller that provided its scares on mostly subtle terms. The upshot was that it was a refreshing, creepy throwback whose fans really embraced the Halloween-style build up as a trio of masked killers stalked a struggling couple with an impressive amount of restraint.
However, the flip side wasn’t quite that complementary, because for those who didn’t see it on release and who caught it further down the line, The Strangers was an incredibly derivative thriller that found a lack of originality muting its many good points. I, regrettably, fall more into the second group, but possibly the most shocking surprise that The Strangers delivered wasn’t in the film at all, but instead occured a confounding ten years later when a sequel suddenly emerged from development hell and paraded itself around theatres like we’d been gagging for its arrival for the better part of a decade.
Was this belated return worth the wait, should that trio of thrill killers have remained strangers after all?
Hoping to avoid the crippling debt that’s amassed from having to send troublemaking daughter, Kinsey, to boarding school, a family ups and heads out to the trailer park owned by relatives in order to spend one last vacation together as a family. Of course, the mood is extra frosty as Kinsey obviously doesn’t want to go, but mom Cindy, dad Mike and older brother Luke, do their best to try and smooth things out as they arrived at their destination. What with it being off season, the place is utterly deserted, but what’s extra strange is that the people who run the place, Cindy’s Aunt and Uncle, as also nowhere to be seen, but the family unit settle in all the same and relax for the evening.
Cue that fateful knock on the door that sees a silhouetted young woman randomly ask if a “Tamara” is home, and before you know it, the family is plunged into a horrific nightmare as they’re besieged by a hat trick of motiveless, masked maniacs who seemingly don’t need a reason to raise hell at the stop of and axe.
After discovering that their relatives have been long since sliced into ribbons, the fractured family have to try and withstand the assault that the Man In The Mask, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl unleash on them and if they’re going to survive the night, they’re going to have to pull together.
However, this is no cut and dried home invasion like the first film and pretty soon casualties mount up on both sides – but as this bloody war of attrition comes to an end, who will be left standing when the sun rises?
The Strangers: Prey At Night is something of an odd beast. Not withstanding that it took ten years to surface and came out at a time when its existence was more of a perplexing happenstance rather than an exciting one, but it technically doesn’t even follow the pattern of tone of the first Strangers film, swapping out a nihilistic home invasion for more of a survival thriller feel. However, what it does copy from Bryan Bertino’s lean original is that its stunningly derivative for anyone that has even a mild affinity for the odd, cinematic, stalk and slash.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Prey At Night is a bad film, just a deeply unoriginal one, but while director Johannes Roberts (more famous for ruining diving holidays with the 47 Meters Down series) is happy to give us yet another extended cat and mouse chase complete with masked marauders, every now and then the movie pulls out an unforeseen blinder that snaps you to attention sporadically between the highly predictable moments.
For a start, the sequel has switched from brutalising an utterly out-manuvered Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, to leveling the playing field somewhat by giving the beleaguered family more of a fighting chance and far more space to manuever. Also, the trifecta of nutcases don’t seem to be as adept at this slaughter business as they once were, meaning that, while they’re arguably less scary, it raises the excitement level when you realise that the simpering victims actually have a shot at surviving.
It also raises some interesting non-cannon questions about the Stangers themselves; after all, if they’re not acting like their original selves and they’re all played by different actors this time around, would it not logically be safe to assume that the identities of Man In The Mask, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl are merely disposable mantles that can be taken up by any trio of lunatics that wants them? However, as fascinating as heading down that rabbit hole is, it’s not a detail of the actual movie, so I guess it doesn’t really count – and to be fair, the thinly sketched family aren’t exactly a three dimentional lot despite their family trials and tribulations, but lodged within the standard stalk and slash shenanigans, is the occasional burst of random genius that keeps things from sliding into predictability.
Take the rather atypical use of 80s ballards that play sporadically throughout the film that highlight certain scenes surprisingly well and it’s a particular scene, set in a neon drenched swimming pool that’s set to the powerhouse vocal chords of Bonnie Tyler as she belts out Total Eclipse Of The Heart, that really soars. Essentially, for a film that has been sticking close to the Slasher Movie playbook up to that point, rules go right out the window and that one little scene that sees Luke come up against Pin-Up Doll and the Man In The Mask suddenly becomes completely unpredictable as it smashes expectations and break rules with reckless abandon. As a standout scene, it’s wildly unpredictable, but as part of a fairly standard stalker, the scene stands tall as a much needed shock to the system that shakes up a movie that often feels so “safe” it’s like it’s been bolted into horror movie training wheels.
There are some out there who sees Prey At Night’s weird alternating adherence and breaking of the rules as a sign that the movie is somehow a commentary of horror films themselves and to those people I would say I’m glad that they’ve found something to embrace. However, while the film isn’t bad in a conventional sense, I’m just not enamored of the franchise enough to try and dig that deep beneath the surface to conjure up a plus point.
But then… stranger things have happened.
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