A strong first teaser for The Strangers: Prey at Night has landed from Aviron Pictures. 47 Meters Down director, Johannes Roberts, takes the reigns on the loooong promised sequel to Bryan Bertino's seminal home invasion thriller The Strangers which shocked audiences with its bleak and ambiguous vision.
Bertino, who most recently directed the criminally underseen The Monster, broke out in the mid 2000's when films like Saw and Hostile were drawing praise and criticism in equal measures for bringing the so-called "torture porn" sub-genre to life. While The Strangers doesn't completely fit that mold, it's impossible to separate the film's commitment to icy, uncompromising terror from the zeitgeist of the time.
Ten years on, the horror genre has changed considerably, even gone mainstream since Blumhouse started becoming its leading purveyor. What influence this will have on the sequel to a film very much of a different era remains to be seen, but I'm curious to see if The Strangers: Prey at Night retains Bertino's frank and unflinching eye towards horror and, if so, how its received.
Unfortunately, I'll be waiting a while as The Strangers: Prey at Night doesn't land until March 9, 2018.