Completely undeserving of the 40% rating the film appears to have achieved (as of January 19). The Strangers: Prey at Night is a camp and fun horror vehicle that drags the potential franchise out from the depressingly bleak and dreary atmosphere surrounding 2008's "The Strangers", bringing with it a killer soundtrack including Kim Wilde and Bonnie Tyler. Whilst the characters really are thinly written and just pin cushions for the titular killers to pick off one by one, the performances are surprisingly committed. The film has its fair share of moments that are genuinely intense and it has a high re-watch factor.
A great little horror with brilliant special effects that have definitely stood the test of time. Watching Pumpkinhead now, it's almost like a love letter to times gone where there was a lack of computer special effects and the monsters were actually made by human hands and had a real revolting and demonic look that no one has been able to mimic with the use of CGI since. Pumpkinhead teeters right on the edge of the nineties when this kind of horror had started to go extinct. Real good old fashioned scary stories instead of remakes or sequels. Lance Henrikson gives a brilliant performance.
Horror is at its most visceral and paranoid when it's British in my opinion and Kill List supports this opinion massively. A little bit of a hidden gem, in Kill List a troubled ex-army officer resumes his humble day job of carrying out assassinations for large sums of money and inevitably finds himself tangled in a contract that will burrow under his skin and eventually consume him. Firstly the direction is entirely offbeat and has a dream-like ambiance to it as the protagonist staggers through happenings that get stranger and stranger as time progresses, resulting in a showdown that will be pretty hard to forget with a brilliant plot twist right at the end that leaves a burn on the brain. The real horror is in the crumbling of the human psyche and also the family unit. The disintegrating relationship between the characters of Maskell and Buring is so well acted by both actors that it's really quite devastating to watch as it can be all too familiar. I'd definitely recommend this gem to everyone.
Mom and Dad is so so good. It mashes a story reminiscent of Stephen King's novel cell wherein a cellular plague strikes that causes all who listen to a strange signal turn feral and begin attacking people at random. Mom and Dad is similar, however in this it is parents that turn on their young and attempt to kill them by any means necessary due to witnessing a static transmission. Nicholas Cage gives a performance that is standard for him, it's a good performance but is extremely over the top as usual and he is calmed by Selma Blair's stony, sultry expressions throughout. The only thing I can say about Mom and Dad as a negative is that it has a very unsatisfying and unusual ending.
Tragedy Girls is a very interesting horror film as its two protagonists (antagonists?) are probably two of the most relateable serial killers in film history and whilst their cattish on screen behaviour is fluid in the vein of comedy, their unrelenting hunger for recognition and the lengths they'd go to achieve fame, whilst updating their Instagram and blogging about their exploits is actually cleverly terrifying. It's a horror on all parts but definitely has a good amount of black comedy which is bolstered by the performances of the two leads who give brilliant comic performances from the get go, particularly Alexandra Shipp. The zany horror and social media tagline was just about to run it's course, however Tragedy Girls has definitely ensured that this won't happen for quite a while.
