FEAR THE NIGHT Review: Menaced By Men

Tess is tense. Very tense. And for good reason.

Fear the Night
The film will be released In Theaters, On Digital and On Demand on Friday, July 21, 2023, via Quiver Distribution.

Like a snake in the wild, perpetually coiled and ready to pounce, Tess (Maggie Q) manifests an aggressive attitude toward Beth (Kat Foster) that is simultaneously defensive in posture.

By her body language and the words she utters tersely, with a scowl on her face, Tess is not happy about Beth, for reasons that are not immediately apparent. As things develop, Tess is acting in a manner that is meant to preclude her own, even greater disappointment that is sure to emerge from Beth's preternaturally cheerful disposition.

Beth is not happy about Tess, either, and it goes beyond surface appearances, which is clarified when Beth's friends, all young adult women set to celebrate the impending wedding celebration of one of them, the younger sister of Tess and Beth -- ah! they're sisters! That explains the antagonism -- begin to appear. They all set off on a road trip to an isolated cabin, not in the woods, per se, but separate from most all other people. More pertinent to the story at hand, the cabin is not in range of wireless cell phone signals, leaving them ready to be victimized by the most savage beasts on Earth.

Men.

From their first appearance, the men in the film look suspicious and possibly duplicitous. If they're not outright evil people, they are certainly among the least intelligent beasts that roam the planet. They are walking, talking, leering and lying; if they're moving, they deserve to die.

We know that for a certainty, but among the women in the bridal party, only Tess is wise to the ways of the world. Only Tess recognizes the lurking danger that awaits. Only Tess is prepared for action.

And when Tess is played by Maggie Q? Oh, brother, you better watch out, because bones will be broken and bloody holes in bodies will begin to appear.

Maggie Q gives a powerhouse performance as Tess, the living and breathing proof that, in this world, only the survival of the fittest is guaranteed. (Or so movies such as Fear the Night preach.)

Freighted with unpleasantness, it shouldn't be a surprise that Neil LaBute wrote and directed the film, but it surprised me, since I am sorry to say that I completely lost track of his career after the disaster that was The Wicker Man (2006) with Nicolas Cage. Before that, of course, In the Company of Men (1997) and Your Friends and Neighbors (1998) marked LaBute as a filmmaker to watch, with provocative ideas on the battle between men and women.

LaBute began as a playwright and his words have often been charged with intentional provocation and dynamic tension. He's kept busy over the years, most recently helming House of Darkness and Out of the Blue, both of which I watched after Fear the Night. (Neither caught my fancy.)

Even so, Fear the Night features abrasively provocative characters who propel the film through its first 30 minutes, as Maggie Q and Kat Foster bicker and banter with an unhappy edge. Then the action kicks in, and once it does, the fighting becomes constant, as the women fight for survival, the even more abrasive (and stupid) men fight their own worst instincts, and Maggie Q calmly, quickly, efficiently dispenses with the villainous men, as though she was calling back to her days on TV's Nikita or her earlier times in Hong Kong action flicks, like Gen-Y Cops (2000), which was the first time I witnessed her action power on screen.

No one sleeps in Fear the Night, so better take a nap beforehand, because you won't be sleeping afterward, either.