Familiar frights in worthy sequel
It’s been 10 years since Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman were terrorised by a trio of masked psychopaths in surprise box- office hit The Strangers.
Talk of a sequel began almost as soon as the credits rolled on the original but after a decade is there really any great desire to revisit this stalk- and- slash horror? We’ll get to that later, but Prey at Night is a follow- up almost totally devoid of any production connection to its predecessor; only writer, and first film director, Bryan Bertino and murderous characters Dollface, Man in the Mask and Pin- Up Girl – all played by different actors – return. This time the masked trio target couple Cindy ( Christina Hendricks) and Mike ( Martin Henderson) and their children Kinsey ( Bailee Madison) and Luke ( Lewis Pullman) in a secluded mobile home park. New helmer Johannes Roberts has a background in ropy, little- seen horror ( Storage 24, The Other Side of the Door), so the only way was up for the Cambridge- born director. In fairness, though, he does a pretty good job with Prey at Night by embracing what worked well in the original – slow- burn tension, relentless killers with no apparent motivation – while upping the violence. Ben Ketai ( The Forest) and Bertino are both given screenplay credits and they do their best to make us care about the targeted family’s fate. Ultimately, however, any nail- biting moments come as a result of the impressive sound design, a grimy, old- school aesthetic and the creepy masks adorned by the antagonists. The female cast members fare better than their male counterparts; Hendricks, whose post- Mad Men movie career has never really taken off, is the standout, with Madison ( Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark) an effective young scream queen and Emma Bellomy’s Dollface the pick of the three killers. But while a location change was inevitable, this sequel loses a lot of the claustrophobic dread running throughout the original by moving the action from a single house and its close surroundings to a more expansive mobile home park. In the first movie you really felt that Tyler and Speedman had nowhere to go and were doomed to their grisly fate, whereas here there are moments where you wonder why Cindy, Mike and their kids don’t just run for the hills and hail a taxi to safety. As a result, the family start making the type of dumb decisions that will have many a cinemagoer yelling at the screen in mystified frustration. It’s a credit to Roberts’ direction that he manages to maintain a high quota of scares and while there might not be the figurative audience throat- grabbing Bertino managed in the original, he does at least forcefully hold you down by the shoulders. Overall, The Strangers was worth a revisit, but I’m not convinced there’s any mileage left for a third outing – especially if it takes another 10 years.