I finally started playing Dead By Daylight. I’m not very good at it — though I did throw myself a little private celebration the first time I pipped — but I’m working on it. This article isn’t about that, or at least not directly. Don’t worry; I’m not going to burden you with stories of my escapades with ill-mannered survivors or killers singling me out to soothe the chips on their shoulders.

Rather inevitably, though, Dead By Daylight got me thinking about recent iterations of slasher movies. It’s a genre that, if we’re being honest, is hard to get right these days. Creators trying to make a slasher film for audiences with a more modern sensibility may have to find new ways to recapture the careful balance of scariness and silliness (even campiness) and resist the impetus of many recent horror films to take themselves too seriously.

Still, with Scream 5 anticipated for 2022 and Jordan Peele refreshing Candyman for 2021, I figured it was time for a warm-up round or two. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see Sidney Prescott back on my screen, by the way. Sequels or revamps, in and of themselves, can be risky business. In turn, their reception can be extremely subjective. In that light, I decided to go for one that did work for me.

As is the wont of slightly silly, questionably logical home invasion movies, The Strangers: Prey At Night seemed to get mismatched reviews between professional critics and horror fans themselves. The good news is, horror fans (like myself) are great at ignoring professional critics who seem out of step with what lay audiences are into. The even better news is you don’t have to have watched the original film to understand (or enjoy) Prey At Night.

This is (in large part) because the trio of titular strangers have no particular backstory or motivation to worry about keeping track of. Ask about them either time and you’ll get a “Because you were home” or “Why not?”, which is precisely the point. A significant part of what’s scary and enjoyable about both films is their pointlessness.

Beyond that, though, each film is playing by slightly different rules. The original plays like a fairly straightforward home invasion movie. Prey At Night takes this premise and grows it into a slasher, maintaining the intimacy and the jump scares, while upping the body count and bringing to it a pleasantly surprising amount of heart.

Now, maybe that heart wouldn’t be for everyone. If the original’s bleaker twists and turns are what a viewer’s after, I can see how a more human-centered story might be a turnoff. Still, while Prey At Night maintains the original premise that the violence at its core could happen to anyone and has nothing to do with your behavior — contrary to 80s slasher moralizing — the sequel takes its time letting us truly get to know and care about the family of protagonists leading the film.

The choice to utilize a nuclear family instead of just a couple, is as much a departure from the original sensibility as the frequent and deliberate use of 80s music throughout. For me, they’re both departures that work. The former gives both adult fans of the original and younger new viewers someone to connect with. The latter carries forth the clear (and enjoyable) self-awareness Prey At Night has when it comes to using slasher tropes.

It should be said that the film’s commitment to making us not just know but care about this family makes for a slow start. It’s not, at first, a bad thing — investing in them and their family conflicts gives the danger they’re about to face more impact — but it does start to drag on a little after a while.

It’s a shame, really, especially when we get to watch Christina Hendricks as Cindy and Bailee Madison as Kinsey playing off each other that they’re let down in places by a temporarily sluggish script. Madison’s inclusion is a pleasant surprise in an adult role, as I haven’t seen her since Bridge to Terabithia.

Any stiffness from the teenage characters’ actors — Madison and Lewis Pullman as her brother, Luke — is soon rectified when the film course corrects, picks up the pace, and gives these actors something to do other than be bratty, mouthy teenagers. Thank goodness, too, because this is ultimately their story. This is both another fun nod to the often teen-centric stories that make up older slasher fare, as well as a demonstration of awareness of the new audience the film may be trying to reach.

What does threaten to undermine this surprisingly enjoyable character work — among the overall fun and tension that layers overtop — is some unusually clumsy lighting choices. As the title would suggest, the bulk of Prey At Night is (you guessed it) set at night. Yet the crew don’t seem to have a clear sense of how to light at night.

Unfortunately, that makes for sequences that are perhaps meant to be scary, mysterious or tense just coming across as murky and indistinct, casting literal shadows over some acting and set work that deserved to be more visible than it was. There’s a reason that some of my favorite scenes or shots were punctuated by neon lighting, or the bright red of tail lights instead.

When the lighting and atmosphere is working out, though, Prey At Night takes solid advantage of both visuals and soundscape. Like its predecessor, the sequel understands that one of the scariest things it has to contribute is the eerie sounds coming from people and things you can’t see. There’s a reason overwhelming or source-less sound is used as a torture device. The film knows it, and so do its killers.

Equally to Prey At Night’s benefit, it takes advantage of more flexible rules around gore and violence that might not have been available to the 2008 original. Further to its credit, it manages to do so — playing with some fun visual effects and makeup — without lingering too long on wounds in ways that feel cruel or exploitative.

The film strikes the right balance for the fun, schlocky violence that comes with a slasher. It does so while offering enough discomfort and second-hand cringe to root the chase and attack sequences in something fulfilling and human.

Ultimately, as you get to the last few moments of the film, it does start requiring some suspension of disbelief. By then, though, you’ve probably already been along for the ride for a while and bought in, so there’s nothing much to detract from. Besides, if Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees can come back time and again, so can these three, right?

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The Strangers: Prey At Night

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Solid use of soundscapes and SFX makeup
• Fun soundtrack
• Self-aware slasher
• Surprising amount of heart

Cons

• Slow start
• Murky lighting choices