The Strangers: Prey At Night

Mark Lane

James Harris

Ryan Kavanaugh

Bailee Madison

Lewis Pullman

White Comet Films

Rogue Pictures

**The Strangers: Prey At Night** is a 2018 American horror film directed by Johannes Roberts and starring Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison and Lewis Pullman. A sequel to the 2008 film The Strangers, it is written by Bryan Bertino (who wrote and directed the first film) and Ben Ketai. The plot follows a family spending the evening at a deserted mobile home park, where they are stalked by three masked Strangers.

The film was released in the United States on March 9, 2018 and has grossed $27 million. It received mixed reviews, with some critics considering it more entertaining than the original and appreciating its satirizing of horror films, while others noted it as inferior and called it cliché.

## Plot

The film opens in a secluded trailer park. The three masked Strangers arrive and park their truck in front of a random trailer. Dollface wakes one of the sleeping occupants by banging on the door and when the wife goes to investigate, sees the truck parked outside blaring 1980s pop music. As she turns around, she sees the silhouette of Dollface standing in the corner. Dollface kills her off-screen and goes to the bedroom to lie down in bed next to the sleeping husband.

Mike and Cindy, their son Luke, and their wannabe-rebellious daughter, Kinsey, take a family trip to their aunt and uncle's trailer park to spend time together as a family before Kinsey leaves for boarding school. Cindy calls ahead and leaves a voicemail, informing Uncle Marv that they were running late. As they arrive at the grounds and collect the keys to their trailer, they settle in and hear a knock at the door. Cindy answers the door to find Dollface unmasked, but hiding in the shadows. She asks if Tamara is home. Cindy informs her she is at the wrong trailer, and Dollface leaves. As the family sits down to play cards and implores Kinsey to join, Kinsey storms out and Cindy sends Luke after her to try and reach out. As Kinsey and Luke wander around the trailer park, they stumble upon a trailer with the door wide open. Inside, they find their aunt and uncle murdered.

Back at the family trailer, Dollface arrives again to inquire about Tamara and after turning her away, Mike watches as she disappears into the woods. Mike and Cindy decide to go find the kids, whom they find in hysterics. Mike sends Cindy and Kinsey back to the trailer and follows Luke to find the bodies. Cindy and Kinsey return to the trailer and find their cell phones destroyed, and Dollface waiting for them inside. Dollface threatens them with a kitchen knife and the two retreat to the bathroom. As Cindy helps Kinsey climb through the skylight, Dollface breaks into the bathroom and stabs Cindy to death.

Mike and Luke find the bodies and the voicemail that Cindy left them, realizing that the killers heard the message and were waiting for them to arrive; Mike and Luke are then stalked by the Man in the Mask. Mike finds a revolver in the bedroom and finds the Man in the Mask gone. Mike and Luke run from the trailer back to their own and find Kinsey missing and Cindy dead. They drive their minivan around the grounds shouting for Kinsey, but one of the killers shatters the windshield with a thrown object, causing Mike to swerve and crash the minivan into a trailer.

As they regain consciousness, Mike finds himself pinned into his seat by part of the trailer's porch and tells Luke to take the gun and find his sister. As Luke leaves, the Man in the Mask gets into the minivan with Mike, turns on the radio, and kills him with an ice pick.

Kinsey is chased by Dollface and then later Pin-Up Girl. She hides in one of the trailers and is then attacked and stabbed by Dollface before being rescued by Luke. As the siblings are stalked throughout the grounds, Luke hides Kinsey under a porch and goes to the general store to use the phone but is attacked by Pin Up Girl. As he runs out to the public pool, Pin Up Girl ambushes him, but Luke overpowers her and stabs her to death. Luke taunts The Man in the Mask by telling him he just killed one of his own. The Man in the Mask swings his axe at Luke, trying to kill him. Luke falls into the pool and grabs his axe, before tripping him into the pool. They begin to fight for the knife that Luke is holding. Luke is ultimately stabbed in the back and left to die. Kinsey arrives and pulls him out of the pool and sets off to find help. As she reaches the road, an officer arrives but is killed by Dollface. As Kinsey tries to escape in his police SUV, Dollface teases her with the keys. Kinsey uses the shotgun inside the SUV to shoot Dollface; she unmasks her, and as Dollface bleeds to death, Kinsey asks why she is attacking them, to which she replies: "Why not?", Kinsey then finishes her off with a shotgun blast to the head. The Man in the Mask arrives as Kinsey starts the SUV and wrecks it with his truck. Kinsey uses her lighter to ignite a gasoline leak and both vehicles explode.

The Man in the Mask survives and pursues her in his truck, engulfed in flames, but still functional. As he corners her on the bridge to the trailer park, he moves to attack her with his axe, but is badly burned and seemingly falls dead. Kinsey reaches the road and flags down a mother and her son in a pickup truck, but they attempt to flee when they see the Man in the Mask appear behind Kinsey. Kinsey climbs in the bed of the truck, along with the Man in the Mask, but is able to finally kill him with a heavy swing of a baseball bat to his head, which snaps his neck.

Some time later, Luke is recovering in a hospital bed as Kinsey awakens from a nightmare. As she gets up to fill a cup of water, she hears a familiar banging on the door.

## Cast

* Bailee Madison as Kinsey
* Lewis Pullman as Luke
* Christina Hendricks as Cindy
* Martin Henderson as Mike
* Emma Bellomy as Dollface
* Damian Maffei as Man in the Mask
* Lea Enslin as Pin-Up Girl
* Preston Sadleir as Officer Brooks
* Mary Louise Casanta as Aunt Sharyl
* Ken Strunk as Uncle Marv
* Leah Roberts as Young Mother
* Rachel Kuhn as Waitress
* Gabriel A. Byrne as Young Son

## True Story

Like it's predecessor, the true events were inspired by Bryan Bertino childhood memory of break-ins that occurred in his neighborhood. One evening a person came to his door, asked for someone who was not there, and left. Later, Bertino found out that other homes in his neighborhood had been broken into that night.

According to the closing credits, all of the events and characters in this film was fictional.

## Trivia

* Before the script was rewritten, Kristen McKay returned and was killed in a brief opening scene.
* The film was announced back in 2009.
* The film has no deleted scenes.
* The trailer park set was built in an abandoned town in Kentucky.
* Lewis Pullman is Bill Pullman's son.
* Mike’s death scene took four hours to shoot.
* The primary setting for the film is Gatlin Lake. Gatlin is also the name of the town in Stephen King's Children of the Corn.

## Movie Mistakes

* During the shot when the trucks explodes from the gasoline, it is clear that The Stranger is not actually in the truck. The next shot has him back in the vehicle.

* When Cindy and Kinsey are leaning against the van talking, the daughter is wearing a white bra strap. In other scenes later the daughter's bra strap is black, even though she never changed clothes.
* When Cindy is drinking wine, it's red wine but the bottle is clear. Red wine always comes in a dark bottle.

## Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 35% based on 86 reviews, and an average rating of 4.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Strangers: Prey at Night may appeal to fans of the original who've been jonesing for a sequel, but its thin story and ironic embrace of genre tropes add up to a bloody step back."

Bloody Disgusting gave the film a positive review, saying, "The Strangers: Prey At Night really takes The Strangers to the next level, and serves as a perfect introduction to The Strangers for new horror fans. You can go back and watch The Strangers and be just as happy for their previous relentless onslaughts”. IGN also praised the film, writing that "Skillfully made, spooky, stylish, and featuring some quite good character work, The Strangers: Prey at Night stands much taller than the 2008 original. The central killers are plenty scary, and some of the images on display would make John Carpenter proud."