By Kelsey Rogers, Asst. living & arts editor
“Black Panther” has easily taken over pop culture and ticket sales over the past few weeks, leaving other films scrounging for leftovers and dying to be seen. One of these leftovers is “The Strangers: Prey At Night.”
This sequel to the original film produced in 2008 depicts a dysfunctional family taking their teenage daughter to boarding school. On the way, they stay overnight at a distant relatives’ deserted trailer park.
They are completely unaware that their relatives’ throats were slit by mysterious strangers in masks the night before, until the two siblings discover the dismembered bodies in another trailer.
The father and son go to investigate the crime scene and acquire a hidden gun after seeing one of the masked strangers standing in the middle of the street with a sledgehammer.
This is where the story started to become immensely flawed. The father started yelling “I’m going to give you five seconds before I start shooting!” and dragged out the most elongated five seconds I’ve ever seen.
The apprehension doesn’t fall far from the tree, because later on the son is too hesitant to shoot another masked stranger. After the parents are gracefully tortured to the soundtrack of 80s pop hits, the siblings are left to defend for themselves as they run around the same mile of property for the entire course of the movie.
They ran past the same playground about five times and weren’t running very fast for people who were on the verge of death – more like a power jog in the last half of the mile run.
Throughout the course of this adventure they were chased by two strangers: one male driving around in a rusty truck and a girl with a butcher knife who seemed to be two steps ahead of everyone else.
Just when I was getting sick of the jump scares, a third stranger appeared and the brother calmly stabbed her several times after she attempted to sneak up on him. Then, the male masked stranger appeared and became engulfed in rage. This led to a very suspenseful knife fight where the brother was stabbed to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.
You think that he would be done for, when his sister suddenly appeared and dragged him out of the pool, running on her barely functioning leg to seek vengeance on the remaining two. A glimmer of hope seemed to appear as a police officer arrived on the scene, but his throat was quickly cut by the female stranger. The sister then stole the dead officer’s rifle and shot the female stranger in the stomach.
I got this huge moment of suspense building in my gut when I saw that the mask was about to be removed, but I was immediately disappointed. Under the mask was just a normal looking girl. When the stereotypical question of “Why are you doing this?” was asked, she just muttered some incomprehensible gibberish before getting shot in the face and finally dying. If you are going to tease at providing some clarity to the movie, at least provide me with some answers.
To finally take out the last remaining member who was driving around in his “Larry the Cable Guy” truck all evening, she lit the truck on fire and walked away from the scene in all of her glory. That is, until he somehow survived the explosion, pulled a shard of glass out of his torso and survived another 20 minutes as she escaped onto a highway for help. Talk about overkill.
This 90 minute film could have easily been condensed into 45 minutes. Although the production was shot beautifully and had a fantastic throwback soundtrack, the plot was so frustrating and full of holes that I couldn’t focus on the positives. It was easily comparable to watching your Sims flail around hopelessly in a burning house when they could easily walk out the front door.
“The Strangers: Prey at Night” was mediocre at best for a horror film, with your typical jump scares and frustrating plot. They had a decent concept and failed to produce a substantial sequel. I give this film three out of five stars.