They're fantastic to watch, the only caveat being that Pin-Up Girl is severely underutilized. That was their shtick last time, and it's how they roll this time too. They may let you escape on occasion to maintain the thrill of the hunt, but unless you're crafty, there's no hope for survival. You can't bribe or reason with them, and they love to toy with their prey. They do this for kicks and giggles, and that's what make them all the more terrifying. Why do they do this to people? Thanks to trailers for the previous film, we know there isn't a motive. The mother and daughter wear creepy plastic masks, and are known as Pin-Up Girl and Dollface respectively. The father wears a sack over his face eye holes have been cut open and a single markered line conveys an emotionless expression. From that point on, the family is forced into a deadly game of cat and mouse with three masked assailants, and they are woefully inexperienced and unequipped to deal with the situation.įor the uninitiated, ‘The Strangers' are, we assume, a family. When the girl shows up again, they get the idea that something is wrong, and their concern is fully realized when they stumble upon a couple of dead bodies and find their phones have been smashed to bits. "Is Tamara home?" The family assumes the girl has the wrong place and sends her on her merry way. Some people - in this case, a family of four - are housed in the middle of nowhere when a girl shows up after dark and knocks on the door. Prey at Night never references it, as director Johannes Roberts wanted his take to stand on its own. If you've never seen the original, don't worry. If you were, then you're probably going to enjoy its sequel. So when it comes to this sequel, all you have to do is ask yourself if you were firmly in the ‘I loved The Strangers' camp or not. If that were true, Bad Boys 2 wouldn't be an awesome action romp, Billy Madison wouldn't be a comedy worth seeing, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective wouldn't have spring boarded Jim Carrey to superstardom. That may sound hypocritical since I, too, am a critic, but aggregate scoring systems do not make or break the quality of a film. Why do I keep mentioning Tomatometer scores? Simply put, I believe they're meaningless. Well one thing's for sure: the Tomatometer and audience scores are even less impressive, sitting at thirty-eight and forty percent respectively. The second film landed in development hell for a bit, but after a decade of waiting, The Strangers: Prey at Night has finally seen the light of day… but was it worth the wait? I always thought The Strangers was a good stand-alone story and didn't need a sequel, but when a movie makes over eighty million dollars off a nine million dollar budget, a sequel is all but inevitable… well, sort of. A few months after its release, fans were excited to learn that Rogue Pictures planned to move ahead with a sequel. It was unapologetically relentless and one of the best home invasion flicks I had seen in years. I'm not sure where the disconnect is - it's just one of those love it or hate it things, I suppose - but count me among the folks that loved it. And yet, over the last ten years The Strangers has gained something of a cult following. Aggregate sites are problematic in that they only take an overall ‘yay' or ‘nay' into consideration and virtually none of the context, and while many on the internet are smart enough to know that, scores this low are still perceived as film repellant. Rotten Tomatoes aggregate ‘Tomatometer' scores it at a measly forty-five percent, while the audience echo the sentiment at a paltry forty-seven. Seeing how The Strangers had been received since its premiere in 2008 has been interesting, to say the least.
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