Havok wrote:The Strangers: Prey At Night
After walking out of this one I was trying to think of a highly acclaimed first film that was enjoyable and solid, only for a sequel to come along and just shit in your cereal bowl. Not until I got home while I was using the bathroom that it finally dawned on me. The Strangers 2 is basically The Descent Part 2. Just a needless film cashing in on the property name and overall success of the first film that just makes you hate that a sequel even exists in the first place.
Honestly, there is no reason to see The Strangers 2. It's a dull, cliched movie that you've seen done better numerous times from other home invasion movies since the release of the first Strangers film. Don't get me started on how they straight up lifted the ending of Texas Chainsaw Massacre during the final moments of Prey At Night. Yes, i'm talking about the Truck scene. Fuck out of here.
I'm gonna piggy-back on my man's review here. Semi spoilers ahead.
Let me preface by saying this is the first horror movie I've watched in awhile, and so I too was thrown for a loop as to why it was devolving into the so many cliche horror tropes compared to some of the gritty realism, and subtle-ness of the first, but I actually kinda dug it as I got to yell at the screen and shit. With shit like "Shoot that bitch in the face. Not in the gut, not the chest, right through that fucking mask... What are you doing, she's standing right there, shoot her in the face. Oye you fucking candyass..." to "Dude, I get you're all fucked up and you're fucking dead anyways, but don't let Sackface just gank you! Fight, punch him! Don't just say "Oh please don't", hit him! Oh, god damnit" etc. For me, I was embracing the bullshit and it did have a couple good suspense scenes, and finally towards the end our wimp male protagonist is finally doing
something, and THEN the end comes. And I'm not talking about the TCM homage Havok mentioned, that didn't bother me, but where these motherfuckers didn't just jump the shark but catapulted over it was by turning Sackface into full on Voorhees/Myers shit! Motherfucker just won't die. The first was built on good suspense and the idea of "watch out, this shit could happen to you too", and the powers here just said fuck it all.
I was entertained decent enough until the ending, but what they did and crapping over the first film in many ways, fuck it, I would never watch this one again.
I get maybe they are looking for Sackface to be some new franchise character of horror, marketability etc, and you could have that with Sackface, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl, except you buttfucked one of the things to make the first work... They won, seemed real, and there was no rhyme or reason to them. But hey, maybe I'm not in marketing for a reason, but it doesn't take a genius to see how they fucked this up.
And then my next biggest gripe after the ending, was buttfucking a scene from the original. In the OG, it was even in the trailer, but watching the movie in totality, I thought it was effective and chilling. Liv Tyler is about to get ganked or it was her final ganking (been awhile since I've seen the first), and she asks why, why are you doing this. And Dollface responds with "Because you were home". You know they were just cruising around, looking and knocking at doors until these poor schmucks were the ones to answer. This has a very similar scene, except the tables are turned, retardedly. Our main protagonist girl just blasted Dollface in the chest at point-blank range with a fucking shotgun out a car. Ain't nobody surviving jack shit after that, but she walks up to Dollface, flips off her mask (revealing a good-looking actress I might add, not kill her) and asks the same shit, and Dollface says "Why not?". Well "click-click",bada-bing bada-boom, Dollface is outta the room. The same writer-director worked on this, do you not see the difference...? Fuck. I don't know how much other studio/exec stuff strong-armed this, but the boat was missed entirely.
