Do you like unoriginal movies? How about the ones that solely rely on jump scares? Finally, do you like the main characters accepting their fates and not fighting back? Well, I have a great movie you will love to hate. The Strangers: Pray at Night (2018) movie review
Fair warning, my movie review will have minor SPOILERS.
The Strangers: Pray at Night is a 2018 horror movie directed by Johannes Roberts. It revolves around a family of four who are stalked by three psychopaths in a secluded mobile park. The movie was in production since 2008 and was dropped multiple times by different studios which is never a good sign.
Anyway, the characters in this movie are extremely boring. They are one dimensional with no discernable characteristic or clear motives. They exist in this universe just to be killed and not much beyond that. When they are facing the strangers, they don’t fight back as if their survival instincts are nonexistent. When they do get an upper hand, they don’t act upon it even though they saw these strangers hurt their significant others. This makes them needlessly helpless and not relatable because we, the audience, would do SOMETHING to fight back.
We can’t talk about the movie without talking about the cliches. This is one of the main reasons many people hated the movie. These cliches range from cell phones not working, people feeling a false sense of being safe, and a killer not being dead when you think they are. You also got killers who know exactly where our protagonist are hiding or going to hide as well as splitting up when you know you are in danger. One scene that made me very mad is when one of the strangers receives a POINT BLANK shotgun blast into their chest and require a 2nd shotgun blast to be finished off. That kind of blast would rip them in half. Also, how the hell do you walk away from an explosion that turns your truck into a giant fireball? These are regular people, not supernatural entities.
Overall the movie is extremely boring with forgettable characters and a crapload of cliches. You got a family story with some tension between a teenager and her parents that is so interesting that I couldn’t care less about her fate. Also, this is the biggest waste of Christina Hendricks I have ever seen. She has like 20 lines and bunch of “where did I go wrong with my kids?” reaction shots. Do yourself a favor and watch the first movie The Strangers (2008). If by some chance you still want to see the movie I reviewed, I will post a link to Amazon where you can watch it for free with a Prime membership.
Thanks for reading my The Strangers: Pray at Night (2018) movie review
