“The what?!” Jamie and Patrick say in shock. “The American Society of Movie Nerds,” the man says, rubbing some dirt from the placard as he passes through the door, “Why? What did you think it said?” Patrick and Jamie look at each other. “So, what is this place?” Jamie says after an unnecessarily long pause. They appear to be in a tunnel system of some sort. “Oh, just a place where movie nerds can get together and crunch the numbers on movies,” says the man, who they will come to know as Jacques. But neither of them are listening. For they have just entered a room full of the most wondrous sights. With a trembling hand Jamie reaches for a nearby shelf and gently grabs a VHS copy of Crackerjack. A tear rolls down his face. Jacques dabs his cheeks with a handkerchief. “Careful there,” he says soothingly, “you don’t want to damage the box with your tears.” Have they found their soul mate? They can feel the memory of Kyle fading like a photo of Marty McFly. After Jacques shows them a couple rare VHS copies of lesser known Canadian T&A comedies, Jamie, for the first time, sees a light at the end of his tunnel of grief. He turns to Jacques to ask if he might volunteer here, but Jacques is distracted. Jamie and Patrick huddle with him and see that he’s looking at a couple of fellow nerds. But there is something… off about these nerds. “Huh, that’s funny…” Patrick muses, “why are they so focused on the Star Wars and Star Trek stuff and not…” “the rare stuff,” they all say in unison. “Those aren’t nerds at all!” Jacques says in a panic before pulling an alarm and yelling, “There are strangers among us!” That’s right! There are Strangers among us. The Strangers: Prey at Night and The Strangers: Chapter 1, the two sequels to The Strangers. I’ve never seen any of them so I better buckle up. Let’s go!
The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) – BMeTric: 53.7; Notability: 13
StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 6.4%; Notability: top 24.0%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 24.6%; Higher BMeT: Slender Man, The Open House, Holmes & Watson, Escape Plan 2: Hades, Fifty Shades Freed, Siberia, The Titan, How It Ends, Gotti, Truth or Dare, Fahrenheit 451, The Predator, Robin Hood, The Nun, The Possession of Hannah Grace, The Week Of; Higher Notability: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Venom, The Predator, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Happytime Murders, Hunter Killer, Holmes & Watson, Mortal Engines, Death Wish, The Cloverfield Paradox, Fifty Shades Freed, Game Over, Man!, 7 Days in Entebbe, Johnny English Strikes Again, Overboard, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The 15:17 to Paris, Gringo, Welcome to Marwen, The Darkest Minds, and 40 more; Lower RT: Gotti, The Open House, Billionaire Boys Club, Escape Plan 2: Hades, Slender Man, Replicas, Holmes & Watson, The Professor, Fifty Shades Freed, Winchester, Siberia, Little Italy, Peppermint, Life Itself, The Outsider, Robin Hood, The Darkest Minds, Truth or Dare, Look Away, The Kissing Booth, and 41 more; Notes: Slender Man, oh, the promise of the Bye Bye Man vibes, but just never really got there. Amazing it appears to have the highest BMeT of any film from 2018. That’s wild. Someday Gotti. Someday.
RogerEbert.com – 3.5 stars – Ten years is a long gap between a movie and its sequel, especially for a horror movie. That gap, though, seems as if it was enough time for the filmmakers of “The Strangers: Prey at Night” to get it right.
(Oh snap. The odd thing about Prey at Night is just that. I thought it was like … well received. Then it turned out it wasn’t? Kind of wild. Have we ever done a four star RogerEbert.com film? I venture to say no, although it is more possible since his passing and specifically a Horror film I would think.)
Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQrKls7k-Q/
(So … the same movie as before? I guess that is the allure of franchises like this. The same thing but more extreme and weirder over and over and over again. Like Saw.)
Directors – Johannes Roberts – ( Known For: 47 Meters Down; 47 Meters Down: Uncaged; The Other Side of the Door; V/H/S/99; Storage 24; F; Forest of the Damned; Hellbreeder; BMT: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: Man, Racoon City, remember that one? Oh snap, she has an upcoming film called Primate which is effectively just Cujo with a chimp.)
Writers – Bryan Bertino – ( Known For: The Strangers; The Dark and the Wicked; The Monster; Mockingbird; BMT: The Strangers: Prey at Night; The Strangers: Chapter 1; Notes: Writer for the original. He has a film coming out this year (it claims) called Vicious with Dakota Fanning.)
Ben Ketai – ( Known For: Malevolent; River Wild; Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word; BMT: The Forest; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: He has some Crackle show called StartUp with Ron Perlman he created and wrote 30 episodes for. Television is wild man.)
Actors – Christina Hendricks – ( Known For: Drive; Toy Story 4; The Neon Demon; Detachment; Dark Places; Scoob!; Crooked House; Lost River; Struck by Lightning; God’s Pocket; Ginger & Rosa; American Woman; Candy Jar; Pottersville; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry; The Family Tree; Company; Egg; Leonie; South of Pico; Future BMT: Life as We Know It; Bad Santa 2; BMT: Zoolander 2; Fist Fight; The Strangers: Prey at Night; I Don’t Know How She Does It; Notes: Remember Man Men? She is still doing a ton of television (lots of voice work), and has some mini-series upcoming. She was nominated for six Emmys. Never won. Which seems crazy. I think she ran into a buzzsaw of Justified, The Good Wife, and Downton Abbey. Still … at the very least the second season right?)
Martin Henderson – ( Known For: The Ring; Everest; X; Miracles from Heaven; Bride & Prejudice; Battle in Seattle; Little Fish; Skagerrak; Cedar Boys; The Moment; Kick; Future BMT: Smokin’ Aces; Windtalkers; Flyboys; BMT: The Strangers: Prey at Night; Torque; Devil’s Knot; Notes: Is very much in some television series called Virgin River. And then has something called Alphas in post-production.)
Bailee Madison – ( Known For: Bridge to Terabithia; Brothers; Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark; Conviction; Lonely Hearts; Phoebe in Wonderland; A Week Away; Play Dead; An Invisible Sign; Look; Cowgirls ‘n Angels; Saving Sarah Cain; A Cinderella Story: Starstruck; A Cowgirl’s Story; Watercolor Postcards; 25 Hill; Future BMT: Parental Guidance; Letters to God; BMT: Just Go with It; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: Was in 57 episodes of some series called Good Witch. And she’s in the Pretty Little Liars … spin off? I have no idea what Original Sin is.)
Budget/Gross – $5 million / Domestic: $24,586,708 (Worldwide: $31,039,126)
(That’s great. I don’t really understand why it took so long to make a sequel and why it took so long to just go for the trilogy … then again, the new one is apparently terrible.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 40% (49/124): 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.
(Juuuuuuuust barely qualifies. Pretty silly. For years it didn’t, but then I think they got rid of one of the reviews or something? The lack of clarity on Rotten Tomatoes is quite frustrating. It really should operate a lot more like wikipedia than … whatever it is.)
Reviewer Highlight: Two films in, The Strangers has already become a horribly familiar franchise. – Clack Collis, EW
Poster – The Sklogs: Rich and Poe
(This is treating The Strangers like it’s Texas Chainsaw. Otherwise it’s… still kind of bad. Bad font. Looks kind of cheap. I don’t like it much at all. But it doesn’t hurt my eyes. C-.)
Tagline(s) – Let us prey. (B-)
(I mean, yes. I will ding it for being too generic.)
Keyword(s) – 2024-2024
Top 10: Dune: Part Two (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), The Substance (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), Civil War (2024), The Fall Guy (2024), Gladiator II (2024), Inside Out 2 (2024), Longlegs (2024)
Future BMT: 72.3 Singham Again (2024), 64.5 The Exorcism (2024), 62.6 Imaginary (2024), 62.1 Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024), 47.5 Afraid (2024), 30.3 Slingshot (2024), 29.3 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 28.3 Devara Part 1 (2024), 26.0 Fighter (2024), 24.5 Red One (2024), 24.2 Summer Camp (2024), 21.7 The Fabulous Four (2024), 20.0 Reagan (2024), 19.9 Here (2024)
BMT: Madame Web (2024), Borderlands (2024), The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024), The Crow (2024), The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Night Swim (2024), Tarot (2024), Argylle (2024), The Watchers (2024), The Garfield Movie (2024), Back to Black (2024)
Best Options (franchise): 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024)
(Since this is a bonus it won’t show up. And also because of how I generated the email it also thinks we haven’t seen The Strangers: Chapter 1. But it is one of two good options, and Kraven was a bonus Live we did right at the last minute, so this was the best option.)
Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 16) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Bailee Madison is No. 1 billed in The Strangers: Prey at Night and No. 6 billed in Just Go with It, which also stars Adam Sandler (No. 1 billed) who is in Jack and Jill (No. 1 billed) which also stars Al Pacino (No. 2 billed) who is in 88 Minutes (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 6) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 16. There is no shorter path at the moment.
Notes – Before the script was re-written, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) from the first film was going to return for only for the opening scene, where she would be killed.
This film was announced back in 2009.
There’s a scene in the movie where Luke puts down a pistol on top of a book. The title of the book was “A Stranger is Watching.”
The Man In The Mask is the only killer in the film to not have any lines of dialogue.
The director admittedly doesn’t like slasher movies or home invasion movies.
Bad Movie Twins 