FILM REVIEW OF ''THE STRANGERS: PREY FOR NIGHT" (2018)

Indeed, “The Strangers: Prey for Night” (** OUT OF ****) arrives ten years later as a belated sequel to writer & director Bryan Bertino’s 2008 horror chiller “The Strangers.”  Although Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) survived in the original “Strangers,” she doesn’t show up for the sequel.  While Bertino received first credit for writing this follow-up film, “Forrest of the Damned” director Johannes Roberts has taken over the helm, and “30 Days of Night: Dark Days” scribe Ben Ketai has contributed to the screenplay.  Mind you, “The Strangers: Prey for Night” lacks the nihilistic artistry of “The Strangers.” Nevertheless, the sequel proves far more satisfying in terms of dramatic closure.  Whereas only Liv Tyler lived in “The Strangers,” two characters escape the knives, ax, and vehicular mayhem in “Prey for Night.”  No, you don’t need to watch “The Strangers” again to appreciate its tardy sequel.  If you do, you may notice certain scenes are replicated here for greater impact.  One of the things that made “The Strangers” such a startling exercise in terror was its violence.  At one point, Kristen’s terrified boyfriend, James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) found a shotgun.  Unfortunately, when he wielded it, Hoyt accidentally killed Mike (Glenn Howerton), his best friend.  Since the front door stood ajar, Mike had blundered into the house, and Hoyt mistook Mike for one of the three foes.  Nobody perishes from friendly fire in “Prey at Night.”  The two films share some similarities, but they remain largely different based on their respective settings.  “The Strangers” emphasized claustrophobia because the bedlam occurred in a ranch house in the woods.  The hysterics in “Prey at Night” are not confined to one house.  Instead, the pandemonium rages within an isolated trailer park where only the manager and his wife remain during the off-season.  Ostensibly, the two movies take place after dark, and the predators eventually sabotage all means of communication.  As slick as Johannes Roberts’ direction is, “Prey for Night” amounts to a lukewarm, standard-issue, 1980s slasher saga.  Bits and pieces of the storyline—not the body parts of its slain victims—have been tweaked sufficiently to make it its 85-minute running time tolerable.

In “The “Strangers,” Kristen and James had just gotten home after attending a wedding.  Clearly, they were amorous couple, but they had not set a date for their own wedding.  “The Strangers: Prey at Night” deals with a family in turmoil.  Cindy (Christina Hendricks of “The Neon Demon”) and her husband Mike (Martin Henderson of “Windtalkers”) are driving their problem child daughter, Kinsey (Bailee Madison of “Just Go with It”), to a boarding school.  Kinsey has a rebellious streak a mile wide.  She wears Goth girl make-up and smokes cigarettes without inhaling them.  All of Kinsey’s girlfriends skip school and participate in activities just as onerous as she did, but their parents haven’t punished them.  Cindy tells her defiant daughter she wishes that her mother could have confronted her problem as she has Kinsey’s.  Mike loads up the mini-van, and they pick up Kinsey’s older brother, Luke (Lewis Pullman of “Battle of the Sexes”), who has been playing baseball with his pals. Naturally, Kinsey and Mike annoy each other during the journey.  Although the family fell behind their scheduled departure, Cindy has left a telephone message for Uncle Marvin at Gatlin Lake Trailer Park that they will be arriving late.  We the audience already suspect this family is headed for an ill-fated rendezvous because the three murderers —the Man in Burlap Mask (Damian Maffei of “Nikos the Impaler,” Dollface (newcomer Emma Bellomy), and Pin-Up Girl (newcomer Lea Enslin)—have broken in on Uncle Marvin and Aunt Sheryl and relieved them off all their worldly anxieties.  Interestingly, this older couple slept with a dog between them, but the canine cowered rather than attacked.

Predictably, Cindy and family don’t have a clue about their impending doom.  They arrive after dark, and Cindy picks up their trailer key from main office.  Of course, nobody greets her.  No sooner have they settled in than somebody knocked at the door.  The knocking itself sound ominous.  Cindy opens it to find a girl standing in darkness on the porch.  The outside light is not shining, so Cindy cannot see the girl’s face.  The girl asks her if Tamara is home.  Cindy disappoints her, and she watches the girl leave.  Stubborn Kinsey refuses to play cards with Cindy and Mike, and she storms out of the trailer to smoke.  Cindy sends Luke after Kinsey.  After the sinister prologue, director Johannes Roberts devotes about thirty minutes acquainting audiences with the family.  They appear average.  The parents are struggling to raise their two children, but one has run off the rails.  If a message lurks in “The Strangers: Prey for Night,” could it be: “think twice about sending your daughters to boarding school?”  Otherwise, Cindy and Mike seem like a model couple with few flaws.

“The Strangers: Prey for Night” differs from its predecessor because its victims enjoy a greater chance of survival. Meantime, the filmmakers have scrupulously observed the rules of the slasher fest.  The masked villains are virtually indestructible.  Some can recover from the worst injuries.  An older man wearing a burlap bag drives them around in a battered Ford pick-up.  He is dressed in a suit and tie.  He favors an ax.  Something about the way an ax sounds as it is dragged across concrete appeals to him.  The two girls prefer kitchen knives.  They display no emotions whatsoever when they maim or slaughter their victims.  The masked dastards in “The Strangers” behaved in similar fashion.  One of Cindy’s family asks her assailant why she is trying to kill her.  “Why not?” the girl utters with a dreamy gaze.  Not surprisingly, when the stabbing starts, the family goes berserk.  They do the usual, foolhardy things victims do.  Everything about “The Strangers: Prey for Night” is hackneyed, but the film adheres to the slasher formula with enough style to make it adequate for a rental.

FILM REVIEW OF ''PACIFIC RIM" (2013)

FILM REVIEW OF ''PACIFIC RIM" (2013)

"Hellboy" director Guillermo del Toro and scenarist Travis Beacham have caught Michael Bay and his "Transformers" franchise napping with the theatrical release of "Pacific Rim" (*** OUT OF ****). This entertaining but formulaic hokum amalgamates science fiction with horror in an apocalyptic adventure epic that pits humans piloting giant robots against "Godzilla" type monsters from another dimension. Imagine "Godzilla" meets "Robot Jox" (1989), and you'll have a good idea what to expect from "Pacific Rim." When you aren't laughing yourself silly at the doomsday premise of mankind tangling with alien behemoths from another galaxy, you may find yourself caught up in the bombastic, larger-than-life action. Basically, "Pacific Rim" amounts to a slugfest between towering robots and amphibious leviathans that attack each other on both land and sea. Just because you haven't swamped your bathtub lately with a rubber ducky in one fist and a huge plastic robot in the other doesn't mean that you won't enjoy this boisterous Armageddon. Comparatively, between the heroic humans and the "Jurassic Park" influenced monsters, Del Toro creates more urban destruction than both "Marvel's Avengers" and DC's "Man of Steel." Skyscrapers topple like dominos, and gargantuan creatures rampage through several heavily populated Pacific rim properties like tornadoes. In the hands of a talent lesser than Del Toro, who also helmed "Blade 2," "Pacific Rim" might not have been so amusing. The film's biggest asset isn't the impressive CGI combatants, but its cheeky sense of humor. Meantime, the biggest problem this outlandish epic contends with is its largely unknown cast. Aside from veterans like Ron Pearlman and Idris Elba, who support rather than lead, nobody qualifies as a celebrity superstar. Charlie Hunnam has made one above-average thriller "Deadfall" and appeared in 70 episodes of the "Sons of Anarchy" television series as Jackson 'Jax' Teller. Anybody who liked Steve McQueen will notice a stunning resemblance between Hunnam and the "Bullitt" star. Hunnam has all of McQueen's physical movements down, but his hair looks a mite long. Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi plays Hunnam's feisty co-star, and they wind up sharing more than merely physical space in this rock 'em, sock 'em saga. The beauty of unknowns in a mega-budget movie like "Pacific Rim" is that you're never certain who is going to survive the fracas.

This fast-paced, live-wire, science fiction spectacle takes place about seven years from now in 2020. The worst thing that we face as a society then isn't suicidal terrorists. Instead, it's the Kaiju.  These massive, dinosaur-like, creatures from another dimension that emerge from a breach in the ocean floor to stomp the smithereens out of San Francisco, Manila, and Cabo San Lucas. Initially, mankind tried out conventional weapons on these supernatural mega-beasts. Unfortunately, more powerful weapons were required to repulse these pugnacious leviathans. All the scenes with the monsters trashing cities will evoke memories of the original Japanese Godzilla movies as well as the 1998 American remake starring Matthew Broderick. Eventually, mankind cooperates on a global basis and assembles huge, 250-foot tall, humanoid metal com-bots with cannons and lasers called ‘Jaegers.’ Two pilots in tandem operate these man-made monsters with each acting as opposing neural hemispheres. Like the monsters, the Jaegers can 'take a licking and keep on ticking' in the drink as well as on dry land. The pilots don space suits, wield their two minds as one in "Star Trek" mind-meld fashion, and control their robot from a sophisticated Wii platform built into the head-piece of the hulk. Two pilots are essential for a Jaeger because one pilot cannot perform the tasks mandatory without suffering long-term, nose-bleeding, side-effects. When these robots are prepared for combat, both pilots must establish a neural link between their minds, so their memories and consciousness are bonded together by inboard hardware. As it turns out, Earth succeeds in deterring these creatures. Nevertheless, the Kaiju haven't tossed in the celestial towel. They storm back for one final fracas, and the best of the Jaegers confront them in a life and death struggle in the north Alaskan Seas. Brothers Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff of "After Earth") and Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam of “Sons of Anarchy") wade into icy waters against the orders of their superior, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba of "Thor"), to save a fishing vessel from the Kaiju. This Kaiju has a surprise in store for them when it rips the head-piece off the Jaeger and pulls Raleigh's brother Yancy out. Stunned and injured during the toe-to-toe fray, Raleigh manages to bring the Jaeger home and quits the program. He is a hull of his former self now that his brother is gone. The Jaeger program isn't far from extinct itself. The authorities have decided walls are the answer to the threat posed by the Kaiju. Every metropolis on the Pacific rim sets out to erect impenetrable walls. Unfortunately, nobody told the Kaiju, and they smash through these immense walls as if they were built of Styrofoam. Stacker searches for Raleigh and finds him toiling on one of those walls. Later, he introduces him to Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), and they assure Raleigh he can drive another Jaeger. Stacker's scientists, Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day of "Horrible Bosses") and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman of "Layer Cake"), are furiously working on ways to destroy these creatures when Mako announces she is the ideal candidate to help Raleigh pilot a Jaeger. Stacker is initially hesitant to let her double- team with Raleigh, but she wins him over to her way of thinking. Stacker’s inspirational speech about “canceling the apocalypse” sounds reminiscent of the King’s “into the breach” speech in Shakespeare’s “Henry V, Act III, Scene I.”

"Pacific Rim" boasts more than just a bunch of robots battling prehistoric monsters. Braying like a jackass, Charlie Day steals the show as an insane scientist who resembles Christian Slater crossed with Rick Moranis. Burn Gorman and he have a field day playing psychotic scientists. At one point, Dr. Geiszler decides to mind-meld with a fragment of a Kaiju's brain and realizes that Stacker's strategy of using a Jaeger to drop a nuclear device down the Pacific Ocean portal from where the monsters hail from isn't going to succeed. "Pacific Rim" qualifies as a monster of a mash.