Loosely inspired by the Manson Family murders, 2008’s low-budget home invasion horror The Strangers took a familiar set-up and turned it into something grimly effective and horribly memorable. It was a no-nonsense 85-minute shock to the system about a couple, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, who find themselves tormented by three masked killers. The scariest thing about the film wasn’t the delicate buildup or the third-act gore but a simple, chilling exchange that was widely used in its marketing campaign. During the climax, while tied up, Tyler’s character asks her aggressors why they’re torturing them. Then follows an emotionless reply: “Because you were home.”
The lack of a convoluted motivation felt that much more terrifying, a tactic also used in 2006’s Them and 2016’s Hush, maybe because the indiscriminate nature of the violence makes us all feel unsafe and maybe because, as many classic horror films have shown, the less we know, the more terrifying it can all seem. But the endless need to sequelize within the horror genre means that too often, unnecessary follow-ups give us all the information we didn’t want to know in the first place. Was Hannibal Lecter scarier when we saw him in brief bursts or when we found out the needlessly fleshed out details of his backstory? Was Jigsaw more effective after the first film or after every element of his life had been provided via flashbacks seven films later?
The inevitable development of a Strangers sequel (it made $82m from a $9m budget) has been plagued with setbacks and now, 10 years later, it creeps into cinemas, marketed largely as The Strangers and acting as a standalone film. It means that a lucrative younger audience who might be unfamiliar with the original won’t feel intimidated by joining a franchise too late and for genre fans who prefer to keep their villains in the dark, it results in a lack of overwritten backstory. It’s a retread of sorts, structurally similar, the elements all in place but second time around, there’s something significant missing: the scares.
Kinsey (Bailee Madison), a rebellious teen, has pushed her beleaguered parents, Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson), too far and they’re taking drastic action. Before she’s sent to boarding school, the family, along with their more rule-following son, Luke (Lewis Pullman), decide to take a brief vacation to make the most of their time as a foursome. They head to a secluded mobile home park and within hours, their peaceful getaway is interrupted by a knock on the door.
Anyone who can still remember what happened after that fateful knock in the first film will have a pretty strong idea of what’s to come and whether it’s an experience they’d care to endure again. Unlike franchises overexplained to breaking point, the sequel repeats the no-frills plot of the first outing with no further depth – which means that as a film, it needs to work as an engine, primarily, to scare us into submission.
The director, Johannes Roberts, who scored a surprise hit last year with the shark thriller 47 Metres Down, shows a comforting adeptness from the first frame. It’s far from the cheapo sequel one might expect and, if anything, there’s a slicker sheen here than there was to the original. It may sound like faint praise but it’s well-lit, something that can’t be said for so many scary movies, and Roberts tries to stage the film’s key sequences with an artful eye. But he’s not got a great deal to work with and what the film crucially fails to do is fill us with that same dread that made its predecessor so gut-wrenching.
Since 2008, horror has become even more profitable, a Friday night staple at the box office, and while the original was allowed patient pacing, the sequel feels tailored to a younger, bloodthirsty audience. The violence starts earlier, there are more redundant jump scares and the expansion of the focus from a couple to a family and a house to a mobile home park makes the tension less precise. There’s also a bizarre attempt to cash in on recent slabs of 80s nostalgia from Glow to Stranger Things (the title treatment in the credits looks remarkably similar to the latter) and despite the film being set in modern day, the soundtrack is littered with power ballads, all of which ruin any suspense being built up in the accompanying scenes.
The cast all perform adequately, with Hendricks in particular proving effective, but it’s just difficult to really invest in what happens to any of them. Before long, characters are all making stock horror movie decisions, and there’s no amount of effective craftsmanship that can sell stupidity. Audience members will be too busy sighing at the screen to be scared.
- The Strangers: Prey at Night opens in the US on 9 March and in the UK on 20 April