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The Strangers: Prey at Night | 2018 | R | - 1.8.6
A family (Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison and Lewis Pullman) on a road trip arrives at an isolated trailer park to stay with relatives. However, the park is abandoned and after moving into a trailer, the family is terrorized by a masked trio (Emma Bellomy, Damian Maffei and Lea Enslin) wielding knives and axes. The family must now escape to survive. Directed by Johannes Roberts. [1:25]
SEX/NUDITY 1 - A husband hugs his wife from behind, he kisses her neck and the scene ends (no sex is implied).
► A teen boy jokes that an old couple watches tons of filthy porn.
► A teen girl wears a T-shirt that's off one shoulder to display a bra strap, half a dozen times.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - A man loads a gun and takes another person to a van when something heavy loudly breaks the windshield of the van, leaving large cracks in the glass and causing the van to run straight into a trailer and the man slumps over the wheel; he awakens (we see blood on his forehead and face and he has a large shard of glass stuck in his bloody abdomen) and a hooded man gets into the passenger seat, turns loud music on the radio, takes out an awl, and the slumped man screams and laughs as the hooded man stabs him in the throat, killing him (we see dripping blood on the victim's throat and the hooded man's hands and awl).
► A woman and a teen are surprised by a woman in a full-face mask who is swinging a carving knife and they lock themselves in a bathroom in a trailer as they scream, but the attacker cuts out the thin wall from the outside; the woman is stabbed in the back (we hear crunching bones and see a lot of blood flow from the body and see it pooled on a bathroom counter), the teen girl hyperventilates, jumps through a skylight, down to the yard and runs into the night, screaming and crying.
► A teen boy walks into a swimming pool area and decorative neon palm trees and loud music comes on as a hooded man with an ax approaches the boy, who has a long knife; they slash at each other, the boy falls into the pool, and pulls the man into the pool and they struggle under the water; the boy walks out of the water until the man stabs him in the back (we see blood flow and a large area of water turns red) and the boy floats in the bloody water, coughing up more blood until his teen sister pulls him from the pool and he continues to cough as we see a little more blood. A teen girl enters a room in a trailer to find a jack-in-the-box on a floor that she picks up and it squeaks open as a woman wearing a mask moves out of the shadows with a long knife and stabs her in the thigh and arm (we see blood flow) as the teen screams several times. A teen girl limping along a road is stopped by a police officer who tries to help her until his throat is slit (we see pulsating blood) and he falls , crawls while gurgling and dies; the teen girl enters the police car, followed by the attacker, who slashes at her several times with a carving knife and the girl picks up a rifle and shoots the attacker, blowing her out of the vehicle onto her back (we see blood), pulls the mask off the attacker and fires a rifle into her abdomen killing her in a puff of smoke (we see no additional blood). A teen girl gets into an SUV, starts it, and a hooded man runs a pickup truck into the rear end of the vehicle, backs up and smashes into it twice on the passenger side (both vehicles are smashed and twisted and we see blood on the girl's forehead and cheek as she falls out the driver's door); gasoline pours out of the pickup and the girl tosses a lit cigarette lighter into it and then hurries away as the two vehicles explode into smoke and tall flames until the flaming pickup backs up and turns toward the girl, chasing her as she limps away.
► A teen boy grabs a golf club and strikes a hooded man knocking him unconscious and outside the boy finds a woman wearing a mask rushing toward him; he hits her with the club, grabs a knife and stabs her several times below the frame, squirting blood into his face (she is presumably dead). A teen boy with a pistol threatens a masked woman with a knife in a trailer, the woman drops the knife, the boy does not fire the gun, a teen girl yells at him and they run out of the trailer.
► A teen girl limps along a road and flags down a woman in a pickup truck; a hooded man rushes up behind the girl, swings an ax and misses her as she jumps into the truck bed, she slams him in the head with a ball bat, knocking him to the pavement and the truck speeds away (we see the man lying face up, eyes open with blood covering his hood, chest, abdomen, sleeves and hands).
► A hooded man exits a burning pickup truck, drops an ax and falls to his knees (we see his bloody, burned hands pull a large glass shard from his bloody abdomen), and he falls onto his hooded face with bloody burns showing, presumably dead. A man enters a bathroom to see a smiley face drawn in blood on the mirror and his wife dead; he shouts and cries, then blocks the door so his teen son cannot see his mother. A teen girl and teen boy enter a deserted trailer and cough at a bad smell as a dog whines and runs outside and they see the word "Hello" on a window many times in red; the teens find a bloody sheet propped up on a bed and the girl pulls it away to reveal the bloody dead faces and bodies of an elderly couple as the girl screams hysterically and then the teens run outside.
► A teen girl is chased at night by a hooded man in a pickup truck that looks to have blood smeared across one side; she hides in a large pipe, the truck speeds right up to the opening with its bright lights on, the teen shouts, and a masked person appears out of the shadows in the pipe and mumbles at her, causing her to scream and run out of the pipe and down a road. A pickup truck drives through a trailer and stops at the couch on which two teens sit, backs up out of the house and rushes forward again, but the teens jump out a window and escape; the boy hides the girl under a trellis and leaves to look for help.
► An elderly woman wearing a long gown and hair curlers answers her trailer door in the middle of a foggy night as she hears a loud knock; no one is there and she turns to see a shadowed figure in a corner; the scene cuts to a masked woman lying down beside an elderly man who is under covers up to his chin in a bed.
► A teen boy and his father see a hooded man with an ax outside their trailer. A teen boy takes his father to a trailer, shows him two dead bodies and the man shouts in surprise. A woman looks at her family's cell phones on a table in their trailer and they are all broken and the trailer power goes off. A teen boy tries to call the police from a landline in a store, but the line goes dead during the call. A teen boy is startled by two windows breaking and shattering from the outside. During the night in a deserted trailer park, a burlap-hooded man and a woman wearing an exaggerated female full-face mask chase a teen girl and a teen boy separately several times as the teens scream in each scene. A teen girl knocks on a trailer door and asks the residents if a certain girl is home, but the girl does not live there and she quickly walks away each time. We hear that a sullen teen girl experienced some sort of trouble in school and is being taken to a boarding school.
► A close-up of a dead body shows an elderly man's bloody mouth hanging open so wide that the jaw looks disconnected. A teen boy helps an injured teen girl to a seat in a trailer, wraps a bandage around her leg and wipes blood off her arm as she groans and shouts in pain. We see a teen boy unconscious in a hospital bed, on life support with breathing tubes at his mouth and nose and a teen girl's hand is covered in bandages.
► A woman with her back turned to the camera gargles and spits into a bathroom sink, but we only hear and do not see spit. A teen girl blows a bubble with bubble gum that bursts onto her face.
LANGUAGE 6 - About 17 F-words and its derivatives, 2 obscene hand gestures, 3 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, queer, creep), exclamations (shut-up), 2 religious exclamations (Oh My God, Jesus).
SUBSTANCE USE - A woman briefly drinks directly from a bottle of wine, we see a few bottles of amber and dark liquor on a table in a trailer home, we see a neon advertising sign for beer in a store window, and a teen girl finds a bottle of whiskey in a cabinet but does not drink it. A teen girl smokes a cigarette in several outdoor scenes, a woman takes a puff from a cigarette outside, and a teen boy takes a cigarette from a teen girl and tosses it off-screen.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - High school problems, violence among teenagers, mayhem, murder, death, loss, regret, parenting, protecting family, survival, trailer parks.
MESSAGE - Boarding school is not always the answer to a high school student's problems.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
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