So before I get really mean I just wanna say that I love slasher films, and I especially love the original The Strangers that came out in 2008, and I was really happy that a sequel was coming out. I was ready to enjoy a movie more than I’ve ever enjoyed any movie in my life, and unfortunately it was all downhill from there. With that said, The Strangers: Prey At Night is such a bizarre viewing experience. There are so many storytelling choices that don’t go anywhere or don’t make any sense, it’s just a movie where the same cliche tropes are played out again and no one really learns anything and there aren’t really characters? Killers chase people down in a trailer park. That’s it. If you’re not really hyped to see a movie about killers chasing people in a trailer park you’re in for a rough ride. This movie is just a series of very weird and confusing choices, and I have made a numbered list.

1. I honestly don’t understand why this movie isn’t set in the 80s, I get that the original film was set in 2005 and it wouldn’t make sense for the sequel to take place in the 80s but there is so many 80s horror cliches, 80s style cinematography, the soundtrack is almost all 80s music. The opening song is Kids In America by Kim Wilde, and if they were going for a true visceral survival horror movie instead of an 80s campfest which is kind of what the movie turned out to be, this song was definitely not a good choice to start the movie. This was my first impression of the movie because this song is the first scene and like the opening credits.

2. The killers. The killers were treated very strangely by the story. Let’s look at Pin-Up Girl for example, since she’s in the movie for a total of around 3 minutes. If you remember in the first one, she (and all the killers) were very intelligent and understood human psychology. You could tell they were psychos. In this movie, they seem to just be idiotic, as if they want to die. The killers make so many mistakes that wind up getting them all killed, which is nothing like their characters in the first movie.

3. The scares. The first movie had jumpscares, and this one did too. However, the jumpscares in this film weren’t suited for this movie at all, since this is supposed to be a Friday The 13th/Texas Chainsaw/campfest slasher. This somehow makes the jumpscares and even the campy 80s-inspired scares feel out of place.

4. The killers are omnipotent. Somehow these killers knew whenever someone got a gun, or a car, and knew exactly where their victims were at all times. There’s a part where Dollface sets off a jack in the box in order to lure the main character to the back of the trailer she is hiding in. HOW did dollface know she was in that trailer and get there before her? Man in the mask is apparently able to burn alive in a car, and not only not die, but chase after the main character in a pickup truck. It’s just like the elephant in the room is that the movie really wanted the killers to be scary and omniscient but also wanted them to get killed off very easily, but also have Man in The Mask survive everything thrown his way?

5. Despite the description of the film, the killers do not test the family’s every limit, they play no psychological mind games like they do in the original film. They kinda just chase the victims around to 80s music. This and the killers pure idiocy (while somehow also being omniscient. You can see how convoluted it gets talking about these killers.) makes me believe these are not the same killers from the original Strangers.

6. The characters are underdeveloped. We get the basic parents and the basic senior high school older brother who is kinda mean to his sister but loves her deep down inside. The main character Kinsey is the stereotypical bad teenager who skips class and smokes cigarettes and uses her phone too much, but other than that there’s nothing to explain what she actually did or why she is being sent away to boarding school. The dad has under 20 lines in the movie, and the one with the most personality is when he asks what a queef is as like comic relief I guess

7. The strangers deaths. The strangers dying is the most confusing and horrible part of the movie. I have no idea why they chose to kill the strangers so early on in the franchise, unless they want to pull an Insidious and start making prequels, all opportunities for further sequels are now ruined.

8. I kind of already went over this in point 6, but this time I’m gonna focus more on Kinsey in particular. Kinsey is not a character. This is like the final nail in the coffin for me. Like what skill does Kinsey possess where we should be rooting for her? Like is she especially charismatic? No, because when we first met her she was crying and smoking cigs and being sent to boarding school. Is she a genius? No, a lot of the decisions she (and all of the characters, including the strangers for that matter) are very poor and idiotic.

9. This movie ends with Kinsey and Luke going to the hospital and Kinsey hearing the jack in the box dollface once used to lure her into a room, as well as a knock on the door very similar to dollface’s, which makes absolutely no fucking sense. The way i see it there are two possibilities: 1. Kinsey is imagining the jack in the box out of fear and paranoia and the knocking is just like a doctor or nurse or someone or 2. The original, actually intelligent strangers from the first movie are back and are ready to get revenge on Kinsey for killing their cousins. I don’t know, this movie is so dumb