Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
The Strangers: Prey At Night follows a family while on a road trip to send their angst-ridden teenage daughter Kinsey (Bailee Madison) to boarding school. One night Kinsey, her parents Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson) and her brother (Lewis Pullman) spend a night in a seemingly-deserted mobile home park. But when three psychopathic strangers in masks show up, the family is forced to endure a night of terror.
The Strangers: Prey At Night doesn’t build upon its Predecessor The Strangers, but instead it uses the same concept and heightens the stakes. The Film succeeds due to Director Johannes Roberts’ continual building of suspense creating a continuous atmosphere of anxiety. Roberts delivers with a killer soundtrack that plays 80s pop favourites with sinister acts of violence therefore invoking something unique and memorable about each wound inflicted. The main standout in the Film is a lengthy pool scene that Horror junkies will be screaming for. Yet, The Strangers: Prey At Night doesn’t deliver anything new to the Genre and has characters which audiences have seen before.
The family members are perhaps a bit too familiar but in this comes a feeling of nostalgia. There are the parents that don’t know how to take care of their one reckless teenage child. All the while having another child that seems to do everything right. For The Strangers: Prey At Night it plays to typical horror character tropes. The Film feels like it’s paying homage to 70s and 80s and this works. And the Cast elevates these characters to round-out the feeling of nostalgia the Film provides. None more so than Madison, who carries majority of the Film, as the rebellious daughter who is sick of being the outsider in her family. And Pullman who relishes in the tropes of his characters and delivers one of the best scenes in the Film.
Elevation Pictures release THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT Friday, March 9, 2018.
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