Title – The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)

Director – Johannes Roberts (47 Metres Down)

Cast – Martin Henderson, Christina Hendricks, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman

Plot – Staying at a seemingly deserted mobile home park, a family is stalked by a collection of masked humans out to inflict much pain and torment.

“Why are you doing this?”

Review by Eddie on 31/10/2018

It didn’t need a sequel, yet it got one anyway (as is the case with most semi-successful horror film’s) but surprisingly, against all the odds that would’ve suggested otherwise, low-budget The Stranger’s follow-up Prey at Night is a moody and atmospheric genre jaunt that perfectly encapsulates 70/80’s horror vibes, creating an experience that won’t be transcending expectations but becomes successful in its intentions regardless.

Directed by 47 Metres Down filmmaker Johannes Roberts, Prey at Night is an extremely simplistic but engaging venture that transports the first films household horror into a full blown mobile home park horror, as Martin Henderon’s Mike and Christina Hendricks Cindy family that includes Lewis Pullman’s teenage son Luke and Bailee Madison’s moody teenage daughter Kinsey find themselves hunted by a collection of masked person’s, seemingly hell-bent on raining down pain and carnage upon their very beings for no apparent reason.

This larger playground than the first film enables Roberts to capture a mist filled and night-time centric arena of pain and torment that harkens back to classic genre entries that’s no more evident or apparent than Friday the 13^th and it helps Prey at Night create its most successful character with the setting of the caravan clad holiday park giving the film a whole new feeling as this one seriously unlucky family try and survive their night of terror.

The terror Prey at Night creates isn’t so much scare inducing, more-so the white knuckle-kind but surrounded by a killer soundtrack and a sense that anyone is fair game when it comes to meeting their demise, this works perfectly for a story that is more about the randomness of violence than anything of substance.

If the film has a glaring weakness it’s found in its latter stages as things start to take some more unbelievable and questionable turns and while it’s not unlike film’s of this ilk to start to go off the rails towards the end-game, it’s a shame Prey at Night couldn’t sustain the more palpable and believable sense of menace that perforates through its opening to middle-acts.

Final Say –

With committed acting turns, brilliantly staged set-pieces and a fantastic sense of time and place, The Strangers: Prey at Night is a low-key horror sequel worth paying attention to and one of the more memorable genre outings in the last 12 months.

3 ½ late-night swims out of 5