#The strangers prey at night true story movie

And not filling it in with an FBI profile and not filling it in with finding out that somebody's grandmother beat them and now they want to kill everybody. So, I got really fascinated with telling the victims' tale. But none of the victims knew about the Manson family or why it was happening to them. I was thinking about the Tate murders and realizing that these detailed descriptions had painted a story of what it was like in the house with the victims. 'Even now, what grabs me, even now, is that it's not the section about who Charles Manson or what was going on with the family. I went off to this small town to stay with my grandmother and my dad - I have no idea why - said, 'Hey, do you want to read a book while you're gone?' And he gives me Helter Skelter which is definitely big boy reading,' Bertino shared back in 2008. Summed up in one line it’s, “Unstoppable killers do dreadful things to wide-eyed victims.” Like the first film in this franchise-2008’s “The Strangers”-it’s tight, only 85 minutes long, and values suspense over gore but goes too heavy on the sadism.'When I was a kid, I read Helter Skelter. “The Strangers: Prey at Night” is one note. They don’t seem to take much pleasure in their work despite their penchant for listening to syrupy pop music and leaving a bloody happy face symbol at the scene of their crimes. The villains are the stars, even though their faces are covered and they barely speak. The family is generic, just victims waiting to be taken. The jump scares are secondary to the notion of the ruthless faceless murderers.

“Why are you doing this?” Kinsey shrieks. Bad things just happen and that’s the creepy part. Instead, it is a queasy-making experience that stems from the idea of people doing awful things for no reason.

#The strangers prey at night true story movie

However, the movie never gets to the point where it is actually scary. The spooky opening, complete with anxiety inducing music, a bit of murder and a title card claiming the tale you are about to see is “based on true events,” sets up the film’s uneasy atmosphere. From that point on this becomes a movie where people make terrible decisions and frequently scream, “Leave us alone!” Things get lively when three masked psycho killers-Dollface (Emma Bellomy), Man in the Mask (Damian Maffei) and Pin-Up Girl (Lea Enslin)-emerge from the woods with knives, axes and bad intentions. You know Kinsey is a rebellious teen because she wears an off the shoulder Ramones T-shirt and smokes cigarettes.Īrriving at their new home, a deserted trailer park, the kids are immediately bored as the parents try and make the best of an uncomfortable situation. The change is an attempt to separate Kinsey from the bad influences surrounding her in the city. Leaving the city behind, they’re off to Gatlin Lake, a small community that empties out after Labour Day. The story gets underway when parents Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson) load their teens Kinsey (Bailee Madison) and Luke (Lewis Pullman) into the car, on the way to a new life. At the same time there’s nothing natural about the horrors unleashed by the all-too-human monsters of this film.

Movies like “The Strangers: Prey at Night” unsettle me more than stories featuring Dracula, Frankenstein or anything other thing that goes bump in the night because there’s nothing supernatural going on.