The Strangers: Prey at Night

The Strangers: Prey at Night (sequel to The Strangers) is about a family that is going to stay the night in a mobile home park when they are attacked by the three masked psychopaths known as the Strangers.

I had to do a little research for this one. At the beginning of both movies (the original and this one), it is stated that these stories are based on true events. I wanted to see how true that is. Bryan Bertino, the writer for both stories, has stated that he based the movies off of the Manson family murders along with classic 80's movies. The Strangers, therefore, are not completely based in fact, and that can be seen in this sequel. The original Strangers movie could definitely be seen as something that really happened, but not this one. There were 4 people against 3 strangers in this movie, and they were in a huge mobile home park. Somehow the 3 strangers always knew where each of the family members was, whether they were in a mobile home, or by the pool, or in the rec center. Maybe there were cameras somewhere that the strangers were using? This is never clarified. I guess that's part of the "classic 80's" type movie right?

This is one movie that I can agree with IMDb on its score: 6/10. I was not crazy about this one, which is sad because I loved the first movie. I think it was just too unbelievable with the all-knowing Strangers being around every corner and the kids that have a gun and refuse to use it. I'm not sure what it is about horror movies, but do we really need to make all the characters seem extremely stupid? If someone had just killed my mother, and I was pointing a gun at the person responsible, I'd pull that trigger! They're literally killing you just because they can. Don't show them mercy! Movies like this make me angry. Humans have way more common sense than horror films give us credit for.

I feel like there were a lot of unanswered questions. Even if the answers are not totally relevant to the story line, I still want to know why. For example, the family is stopping at the mobile home camp for the night while they are on their way to drop off the daughter at boarding school. Why the daughter is being sent to boarding school is never addressed. All they mention is that she skipped school a bunch. Is that reason enough to send someone to boarding school? I don't know. I never went to boarding school, but I'd hope they had a better reason than that to send her. Otherwise, I can understand why she was so angry at them.

I think it is safe to say that this will be the last Strangers movie. It wasn't a horrible movie by any means, but I'm pretty sure the Strangers have had their day in the limelight, and it's time for them to say goodbye. Who knows though...it wouldn't be the first time the dead came back to life in horror films...