The Strangers: Prey At Night (dir. Johannes Roberts)

Whether or not you enjoy "The Strangers: Prey At Night" depends entirely on how you view our central character's decisions. As is the case with all well-worn horror cinema, a welcome stop at a secluded mobile-home on the way to taking their troubled daughter to boarding school sees our typical American family tick off the usual generic mistakes of the easily preyed upon.

Hoping to indulge in a few games of cards and some nostalgic bonding are the hope of the perennially bad parents, yet faceless wack-jobs have other ideas - as they are sought after by the likes of doll-faced and/or scarecrow-masked wearing lunatics -all the while trying to come to some sort of universal resolution of their dysfunctional domesticity.

On the surface, it appears that this is yet another derivative horror sequel, hoping to squeeze every drip of cash out of on original idea; though it must be said that amongst the milieu of cliched horror tropes, there is enough here to reconcile the genre fans: as director Johannes Roberts (director of underrated 47 Meters Down) infuses his own brand of originality and a commendable stylistic edge - though the gestation period for this follow up may have taken nearly ten years and though there's nothing relatively new here, there's still an delightfulness in the misanthropy of it all, and a arrogance about our miscreants aimlessness.

Trace your minds back a decade, in Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman's original low-budget thriller, our lovebirds fend of home invasion loons, shot with an unmistakable nastiness by director Bryan Bertino. This time around it's a family affair - Mom Cindy (Christina Hendricks), Dad Mike (Martin Henderson), son Luke (Lewis Pullman) and emo troublemaker Kinsey (Bailee Madison) are the ordinary suburban family in a crisis due to their daughters erratic behavior (simply explained as poor grades and truant behavior), but a knock on the door spells trouble for our gang, when a strange woman - who's face is masked by the encroaching darkness - asks for her missing friend, yet our perfect American family see no problems with it. That's until they return to their trailer after finding an elderly family mutilated, and find their phones bashed in, and knife-wielding psychopaths chasing after them.

What made it's predecessor work was it's motiveless violence - which came in the form of mask-wearing psychopaths hellbent on destruction - armed with knives and axes targeting families as they took a long-weekend away in the country. Good for us that they don't toy with that concept too much, and actually turn up the wincing mayhem to a cacophony of "Wolf Creek"-like butchery.

Director Roberts lets loose on the madness in his distinctive style- a memorable sequence in a swimming pool, lit by palm tress adorned with fairy lights, sees our scarecrow-masked maniac chasing his prey to the point of an underwater struggle - and camera work is well-exectured, and even more nuanced whilst serenaded by Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of The Heart".

For a while, the craziness follows the same suit, as our criminal threesome attempt to pick off the tribe one by one. Though there's some ear-scrapingly poor dialogue at times, for instance yelling "Just leave us alone!" that follow the usual stock idiocy that our an injured party succumbs to in the horror movie canon, and it's less jumpy than just plain exploitative. But it's undercurrent of mystery surrounding the actions of the criminal contingent - never feeling it necessary to over-contextualize the madness on screen even when one of the perps is asked - "Why are you doing this?", they reply "Why not?" - which attacks you on a psychological level - as feeling like someone kills and maims for the hell of it, is a daunting prospect.

This is by no means a fresh and innovative entry in the horror stratosphere, you'd be hard-pressed not to be disgusted by the gratuitous bloodshed subsidised by synthetic pop-score aids the drama's burgeoning stylistic subversness into a mildly entertaining ride.

Rating 2.5/5.