"The Strangers: Prey at Night" Review
"The Strangers: Prey at Night" is the sequel to a home invasion movie that people vaguely remember from 2008. It's pretty good and is a lot of fun (depending on how you would define "fun").
Immediately, horror fans will recognize the movie's homage to films like the original "Halloween", and the original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" -horror has way too many remakes, I know. Rather than trying anything new, it simply pays tribute and polishes the slasher horror tropes. This is fine. To sum it up quickly, a family gets put in a a secluded location and they get tormented by a bunch of masked people. That's it. What really sets this movie apart from others is the way it chooses to tell the story in long takes, emotional shot compositions and surgical edits. If only the script was as sharp as everything else. Sigh.
From a character standpoint, I really cared for about half of the protagonists. Christina Hendricks and Martin Henderson play very empathetic parents in a dysfunctional family. The kids on the other hand. Oh man. The guy was pretty plain and the girl is... umm, rebellious? I guess. They make stupid horror movie decisions together but sometimes they're really logical. It's not really consistent. It really broke me out of the immersion. It sets up its characters so well and then went, fuck it, we're only here for the violence and jump scares, imma right?
The antagonists are pretty good. They're a force. Kind of like Michael Myers in the original Halloweens. No humanizing bullshit, nothing. Just straight up, terror and nihilism. There's no nuance. But I guess a movie like this didn't need it.
"Prey at Night" is a meat-and-potatoes type of movie. It wastes no time in its set up and it does everything in its power to terrify you. That being said, it takes itself way too seriously and thinks it's smarter than it really is. While the direction, cinematography, editing, and sound design are phenomenal, the movie lacks a solid foundation in its writing.