Review: The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)
One hot summer night, in 2008, I witnessed one of the scariest films of last decade. A terribly underrated movie that didn’t get enough credit for doing things differently so to speak. It was The Strangers directed by Bryan Bertino, who besides crafting this gem, also made another overlooked horror piece - The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), released by every moviegoer’s trusted company A24 which nowadays is equivalent to rich Monaco oil baron’s red sealing wax stamp of approval. Go check it out if you haven’t already.
Going back to The Strangers, it finally received a long-awaited follow-up after development hell - ten years of false starts and pushed release dates. When I first heard about it earlier this year I couldn’t hold my excitement about it: “after a decade one of my most beloved horror picture’s sequels are releasing! I better grab two pairs of underwear this time…”
Boy, I was wrong. I think I came out of cinema with a somehow cleaner underwear and smelling like a daisy. Watching the trailer, my expectations from high to low dropped as fast as it’s Rotten Tomatoes’ rating – at the moment it is a bloody tomatoey mess, yet soon it will look like a scene after La Tomatina festival. It seemed like Strangers won’t be taking itself seriously this time.
To nobody’s surprise - it didn’t, instead trying to poke fun at the original. As our lovebirds are about to begin smooching in front of their stereotypically troubled teens, one of the original three killers comes knocking with the exactly same “Is Tamara Home?”-gig as in the predecessor.
Of course, no one minds when sequels drop a couple of subtle easter-eggs to reminisce just how great it was ten years ago. Purposely reusing scare tactics that obviously worked in the first film in the exactly identical (emphasis on ‘exactly’) way, as if it’s our killer trio’s signature moves, felt like a punch below the belt for the ex-director Bryan Bertino, whom this time was put on the bench as a co-writer (along with Ben Ketai), while director’s steering wheel was given to Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Other Side of The Door).
Turns out it’s the same sport for our sick-minded antagonists as it is for film makers to attempt answering the unanswerable question: “what makes a person kill another person?”
We can just speculate if it is the writing duo’s idea or director’s. The point is sequel did its best to drift away from the quite successful approach to the age of obligatory jump scares seen in the first film. Fair enough, if it’d be the transformation we’ve witnessed in the mid-80s with sideshow freak-out that is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). That’s where Prey at Night rotten problems start and unfortunately don’t end: Chainsaw 2 took a glorious leap of faith from being drenched in terror and fear into the goofy middle-finger vibe of other punk horror; Strangers 2, however, only went skinny-dipping in the retro 80s slasher puddle, that film’s director Roberts is so in love with, without ever plunging head first into the bloody limb-fested waters, leaving us with a movie suffering from identity crisis.
It’s a shame that Strangers 2 took a few steps back in order to make sure its new audience don’t miss on anything, leaving fans of the original forgotten. While I was certain I’m not going to witness anything better or worse after the surprisingly well-shot pool scene, which paid off everything that came before it, one major detail in the film managed to infuriate me more than anything else about the sequel. In the final confrontation scene we get the answer we all been waiting for: why our masked murderers are doing this to everyone.
Turns out it’s the same sport for our sick-minded antagonists as it is for film makers to attempt answering the unanswerable question: “what makes a person kill another person”. Their answer? It’s just fun to do so. No pop-psychological motives, no complicated reasoning behind it. It is entertaining for us to watch them kill innocent people on screen, so why it simply cannot be that they are also having fun?
I understand writers’ philosophy behind this very unsatisfying answer - no discernible motives behind all of the killing can be quite terrifying. Many non-fictional serial killers (Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer for starters) demonstrated that in the past, making everyone appalled because it is beyond comprehension. But when it takes a sequel ten years to deliver such an empty answer in such a sloppy manner, I’d no question take a killer that at least has a thing for Satan or any other demonic entity.
While Strangers 2 successfully parlays into a set definition of horror, at the same time letting its audience examine the inner mechanism behind all pop-horror flicks; not only it manages to check all of the ‘horror film’s bingo’ boxes, but, rather, gives the impression that Johannes Roberts blindly followed it as a guideline. This just proves (yet again) that playing by the rules is not always a good idea: Roberts failed to make a love-letter for his beloved 80s slashers, instead delivering a cheesy Tinder-like message just to get someone in bed and never see it again – the way most of us are going to remember Strangers: Prey at Night.
Rating: 1/5
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You’re better off watching Hereditary (2018), titled as “A new generation’s The Exorcist”, which truly comes as one of the best horror films this year, raising the bar unbelievably high. Or rewatch the original Strangers as it’s probably the best we are going to get, since this second and most likely final installment in the series burned down all the remaining bridges for possible sequels.
