By Jennafer Gonsalves | Observer Correspondent
Image from Wikimedia Commons, by BRFZ1
The Strangers: Prey at Night, while flawed, stays true to the bone-chilling concept of the original while also having quite a bit more fun.
In the year 2008, horror movies were popular, particularly those that contained a lot of blood, guts and mutilation. With franchises like Saw and Hostel going strong, as well as classic slashers such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween being remade for more modern audiences, a move like The Strangers seemed like it would go largely unnoticed, lost in the midst of more and more of the same.
Yet The Strangers, directed by Bryan Bertino and starring Liv Tyler, went in a different direction than what was popular at the time – the film didn’t show much in the way of gore, and instead relied on fear of the unknown to build up an unsettling atmosphere.
The real terror was in the concept of the movie, rather than anything explicitly shown on screen – true horror is often completely random and can happen to anyone without reason. The ever-familiar horror movie question, “Why are you doing this?” is answered not with a tragic backstory or an evil villain speech, but rather with a simple, nonchalant “because you were home,” which is perhaps just as chilling, if not more so.
Opinion on the film seemed to be split right down the middle, with the nay-sayers claiming it to be boring, or unsatisfying.
Seemingly the horror franchises that are successful these days tend to lean more in the supernatural direction, such as The Conjuring and Insidious.
Yet, the remake to The Strangers released in March of 2018, under the title The Strangers: Prey at Night.
Prey at Night, directed by Johannes Roberts, follows a family of four – parents Mike and Cindy, and their teenaged children Kinsey and Luke – as they take a family trip to their Uncle’s (conveniently otherwise empty) trailer park.
Tension runs high, with the rebellious Kinsey angry and upset with the fact that she’s being sent to boarding school, Luke wishing he were home with friends, and both parents doing all they can to smooth things over. Things only plummet downhill from there, when Uncle Marvin’s corpse is discovered in another trailer, and the family begins to realize that they aren’t alone.
This movie doesn’t take itself completely seriously, which works mostly in its favor – horror clichés (for example, the loss of cellphones and cutting of all landlines) are bound to show up in a movie of this nature, but with a slight tongue-in-cheek nature, it comes off as notably less tiresome when protagonists make overly hashed out stupid horror movie decisions.
In comparison to the original film, which took place in a single house, Prey at Night is a lot more visually interesting as it contains mostly outdoor scenes with the eerie background of the deserted trailer park to add to the tension.
It’s also more fast-paced – ironically, it’s exactly the movie I would have wanted to see as a kid, with on-screen killing, quite a bit of gore, and even a few tense car chases.
The cinematography is pretty standard for a slasher movie shot almost exclusively at night, but there are some absolutely beautiful shots nonetheless. There’s a particular altercation scene that takes place in a pool, flanked by palm trees all lit up with neon Christmas lights as upbeat 80s pop plays over the speakers. Juxtaposed with the dark clouds of blood in the water and the tension between protagonist and antagonist, it really makes the scene pack a punch.
The homages add a little something extra for horror fans – despite being clearly intended to be watchable as a standalone, there are quite a few well-placed throwbacks to the original, including the chilling exchange (although this time the answer is “why not?” rather than “because you were home,” but the effect is the same).
There’s also a scene towards the end involving someone jumping into the bed of a truck and then getting chased on foot that’s an obvious shout-out to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This movie does fall flat in places, one being its characters. Slasher movies aren’t usually known for the likability of the protagonists, but in a film like this where the audience is clearly supposed to empathize with its main characters, some development is necessary past just the surface level.
And then there are the jump-scares. Jump-scares are a cheap way of dragging fear out of an audience, and the use of them just shows laziness. Any movie could make you jump by utilizing absolute silence followed by a loud sound.
It’s frustrating as a viewer because Prey at Night is not otherwise incompetent with regards to being frightening – there are quite a few terrifying scenes in this movie, and it sells itself short by falling back on such a lazy method.
The Strangers: Prey at Night is far from perfect, but for what it is, it does a pretty good job. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and its concept still delivers that punch to the gut that was there in the 2008 film. Those qualities, in my opinion, make for a decent horror film.
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