Before you look at this rating and say "oh wow I guess the Strangers sequel is actually pretty good," first consider that I am a huge glutton for:

- neon
- synthpop
- fog
- HEAVY Carpenter influences
- cool title cards
- slasher movies, especially shitty and ridiculous slasher sequels with masked killers

If you yourself are also a glutton for these things, proceed. If not, back the fuck up.

Was hoping I'd like this as much as the original
that I just watched for the first time a few weeks ago.

I did not.

This is a film that features De Palma like silhouette shots, masked killers, pop music, people being stabbed, a sequence involving a knife struggle inside a pool while Total Eclipse of the Heart plays in the background, and Christina Hendricks......

This movie gets me on a deep, personal level in terms of what I want to see when I go to the movies.

(Also no joke, I know I complain about Jump-Scares a lot, but the ones in this legit made me scream like two times)

Brutal piercings of the flesh, blunt trauma, and post-traumatic stress; a non-stop tension-fest from beginning to end (only this one sticks the landing). The anxiety of love and familial bonds being stripped away like skin from bone. Blood-written hellos echo through the halls of the human psyche, and leave behind mental wounds that run deeper than any physical infliction ever could. The pain of loss, greater than the pain of penetrating flesh; disrupted & destroyed not by the bullet, but by the erosion of normality, and knowing that you're life will never again be the same.

88

"On the third track of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Giorgio Moroder discusses the usage of the synthesizer and its basis as “a sound of the future.” He goes on to say that “you can do anything you want”, as there is no judgment, no preconceptions, with the rhythms of the expansive technology. It was, admittedly, a time where romance of futurism and media were frustratingly connected, with the genre-fare becoming bleaker and increasingly aggressive, tuned to the beats of mutilated flesh and existential ennui. The music was waiting for the world, and our perception of it, to speed up and ignite towards The Jetsons, but the result of synth in the ‘70s and ‘80s is clashing ambiance, doomed to accompany a world unfit for its possibility."

On one of the best Slasher films in recent memory.

It has it's moments. That swimming pool scene is dynamite. Most of the "Flaming Truck Grill" sequence is good. In fact nearly all of the action scenes are good. It's the interstitial stuff that hurts.

It all relies on contrivances so profound that it kind of breaks the movie ten ways to Sunday. Why don't they grab the weapon that the killer dropped when the killer is down? Why don't they shoot the killer when they have a point blank shot? Why don't they run and hide to someplace that ISN'T the most obvious place?

Certain segments are phenomenal. The film as a whole doesn't flow together and it regresses hard into early 2000s territory.

The first Strangers is one of my favorite horror movies. Deeply suspenseful, intense, and jarring. In this one, they said hey, let’s take all that cool stuff from the first one, and put it in a mobile home. And then let’s make the killers, of a slasher film, die. Be better

Despite some striking images and a welcome lack of explanation for the menace, Prey at Night doesn't reach the heights of its predecessor, mostly because the characters are too paint-by-numbers.

7,5/10

Masks. 80s pop.

i mean,, im not obsessed with and but i dont hate it. it did some things super well while others felt too mediocre (you can take a nap during the first thirty minutes and you wouldnt miss much) but i definitely respect what this movie did. also had some nice shots. respect.

Could have been an excellent thriller if not for the tropes. The zooms and the soundtrack are outstanding.

Another round of thrill killings, maybe the same thrill killers as in the first movie? I don't know. It's been like, six years for me. Ten since the movie itself was released! Why we're sequeling it NOW - with a perfectly decent, theatrically-released movie no less - I don't know.

These killers pass up a lot of opportunities to kill their marks, so I guess it's more about savouring the flavour than racking up a count. They, like the filmmakers, seem to like staging horrible violence to the sound of upbeat (or at least bombastic) pop songs from the 80's. There is more than enough of this.

But it basically works, with a fresh-ish new setting and a core family that's believable enough, like an old slasher movie with almost as many killers as victims and better filmmaking chops.