[yasr_overall_rating]
A family of four staying at a secluded mobile home park for the night are stalked and then hunted by three masked psychopaths.
I never saw “The Strangers,” it was just one of those titles that didn’t appeal to me. With “The Strangers: Prey at Night,” a direct sequel to the original, the only good aspect about it is that you don’t need to have seen the first one to understand what’s going. In both films, the same events transpire: three masked individuals terrorize an innocent family and then try to eradicate them by movie’s end. While the first film had Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, the cast this time around is not as well known, save for Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) but even she can’t save this overly familiar tune.
Hendricks plays Cindy, a suburban housewife to her husband Mike (Martin Henderson) and mother to her two teens, Kinsey (Bailee Madison) and her brother Luke (Lewis Pullman). We are not given much in the way of a backstory but Kinsey is your typical rebellious teen and obviously got into trouble along the way and with the new school year fast approaching, both Cindy and Mike decide to send her off to boarding school, away from the influence of her troublesome local friends. It is planned that she will stay with her aunt and uncle in a small trailer park so the family decides to head out for the weekend so that they can help Kinsey get settled into her new home and school.
Once they arrive at the trailer park that night, however, they are met with absolute silence. While the park empties out with the end of summer, not one other person is to be found. They locate their relatives’ house and make themselves at home, presuming that their absence is due to them shopping or running errands. Kinsey feels betrayed by her parents, hauling her all the way into the middle of nowhere so she leaves the house to go for a walk. Luke follows her and the two come across a mobile home with its front door ajar. Deciding to take a risk, they go inside and no sooner are they in the living room, than they hear thumping sounds coming from the bedroom. Being a horror film, they decide to go and investigate, instead of running out of the house with their arms flailing. A large dog runs past them, scaring them half to death but then a pungent odor permeates the room and investigating further, they discover the dead bodies of their aunt and uncle, with their faces torn to shreds. Now they run screaming out of the house until they make their way back to where their parents are.
They inform mom and dad of their gruesome discovery and initially, they are hesitant to believe them but with both teens in tears and on the verge of hysteria, Mike decides to take a look. He takes Luke with him while Cindy and Kinsey stay in the house. Once the family is separated, our three masked individuals appear and begin killing them, one by one, until only the kids are left but by then, you will probably have become uninvolved with the events taking place onscreen as you play candy crush on your phone. As an indie filmmaker for over 30 years, the most important aspect of any film, is its script. You could have the biggest A-list stars and director attached but if your screenplay is garbage, no amount of big names will be able to save it. The problem here is the three masked antagonists. We are told nothing about them, not their names, not anything about their backgrounds, absolutely nothing. And this poses a problem. We, the audience, NEED at least some information. With “Friday the 13th,” we know that Jason kills every horny camp counselor he comes into contact with because as a child who couldn’t swim, he drowned as a result of two fornicating teens. Oh and later on another one beheaded his mother so he’s holding a big grudge. Freddy was burned alive by the parents of Elm Street so he exacts his revenge on their children. No matter how stupid or crazy the reasons may be, at least there is one.
Here, the masked intruders just kill with no apparent reason or logic. Are they escaped loonies from the local psych ward? Are they seeking revenge because someone in the family wronged them years ago? It doesn’t matter how insane the reason, at least give us one, without it, the audience cannot buy into the story because they want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing. The list of movie killers with motives is long, the aforementioned Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Cropsy from “The Burning,” Jigsaw, Annie Wilkes in “Misery,” Carrie, and so many more. “The Strangers: Prey at Night” tries to aim for something original within the confines of the horror genre but unfortunately, it misses its mark. A villain’s character development is vital in a horror film, no matter how microscopic, but when you tell us nothing about them, we have no desire to root for them, or against them, because their actions make no sense, at least within the environs of the story. After seeing this atrocity, I might just check the original out after all.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD June 12th
 
