The Strangers: Prey at Night | Film Review

Hey Guys x

This is the sequel to the 2008 movie 'The Strangers' which I saw ages ago, so I was quite excited to see this one. I didn't look up the plot or anything before I watched it, just assuming that it would be a completely different story to the first, which it was. So if you haven't seen the first one, you can definitely just see this one.

A family of four go to stay in a somewhat secluded mobile home park that's unusually empty. What they don't expect, however, is to spend their first night fleeing for their lives from three masked assailants.

That's essentially the premise of this series of films, someone is being attacked by the same three people who wear the same masks.

Now, I have to be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the first movie. I'm a fan of horror, and a fan of slasher movies, but I think I personally connect more to them when I can understand the motivations of the antagonist. With the first one, there was absolutely no reason for the attack, and I didn't really care what happened.

I was really hoping that I would like this one more than the first one. But I didn't.

The thing about this film is that, the main characters of the film are not the family that are going through this distress, the main characters of the film are the assailants, as they are the only recurring aspect of both films.

Because of this, neither group (the family or the assailants) gets proper development before the main events of the story take place. This is particularly necessary for the family, in my opinion, because if you don't understand them or identify with them in some way, then you don't really care what happens. And that's what happened in this film - you didn't spend enough time with the characters, so when the villains came to kill them, you didn't care what happened.

And as I mentioned with the first movie, the villains themselves didn't do much for me because there was no rhyme or reason for the attack. And I'm not saying that everything has to be completely explained, because sometimes this ambiguity works really well, for example, in the film 'Hush'. But for this one, it just didn't work for me.

It also wasn't particularly scary. The idea itself, of staying somewhere secluded and then being preyed upon by masked assailants, is a good premise. And it's a good enough foundation for them to probably make a third. But I wasn't scared for the family, and it wasn't the kind of film that I thought about once it was over.

Overall, if you saw the first one, then you probably want to watch this one too. But if you're looking to watch something scary, or something that you'll actually care a lot about, then I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. However, it's good if you're just looking for a straight slasher flick.

Lou