Day 234 of the challenge! All the John Carpenter homages in the world can't save The Strangers: Prey At Night from feeling like you wasted 85 minutes.
Liked:
If the first Strangers was a modern day 70s horror exploitation film, then Prey at Night is it's retro 80s slasher younger brother. I loved the shift in tone to the funner and sillier 80s aesthetic. The music (both diegetic and non-diegetic) contrasted greatly with the savagery on the screen, and the many winks to much better John Carpenter classics were fun (if a bit on the nose). So Strangers 3 is going to be a self aware, found footage 90's horror I'm assuming?
Didn't like:
Everything else. Prey at Night was such a chore to get through. Terrible and nonexistent character work , cliché horror tropes left and right (I've seen people say it's being satirical, but not buying that for one second), and not even a single good jump scare (the best one was ruined in the trailer). Someone really needs to explain what the appeal is here, because I'm not seeing it.
What a waste of Christina Hendricks.