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Fear the Night, 2023
Tess (Maggie Q) is an Iraqi war veteran who has a tense relationship with her sister, Beth (Kat Foster). The two come to a truce to attend the bachelorette party of their youngest sister, Rose (Highdee Kuan), but things soon spiral out of control when the house comes under siege from a gang of men. Struggling to stay alive and figure out why they are being attacked, Tess must use her military skills to survive.
Bogged down by meager characterization and a nonsensical plot, this one’s a dud.
Please don’t get me wrong: I will watch a million movies where a group of people is trapped in a house and has to fend off some person or people who intend them harm. The home invasion subgenre is one of my favorites and I tend to be forgiving as long as they are okay.
This movie is not okay. It is much less than okay. This movie is an insulting mix of pandering contemporary cliches and a barely-there plot.
It all starts with a cringeworthy sequence where Tess decides to get into a confrontation with a group of men at a gas station. She calls one of them out for stolen valor and somehow intimidates them into silence. I know that people don’t always make the best choices, but even a tough as nails woman knows that humiliating and provoking a group of men when you are in a vulnerable position (ie outnumbered and accompanied by people who are not hardened military veterans) is a TERRIBLE IDEA. While there are ultimately other factors at play in why the men attack the house, watching Tess needlessly create a hostile situation for herself and the people with her is incredibly alienating.
And from that point the movie is never able to build any compelling momentum. There are maybe a few minutes when the attack first begins, that a room full of terrified women and a single male stripper seems like it could morph into something madcap and delightfully gory, but it does not. The movie gets stuck in a repeating pattern where someone is killed, everyone else screams in terror, and then they move to another room and repeat.
It’s all very frustrating. The cast seems game enough, but they are given precious little to do. Travis Hammer plays Perry, the leader of the bad guys. He is reduced to sneering and growling, and talking in vague ways because the movie wants to hold their motivation as some sort of twist. Maggie Q works fine in the action scenes, but her character has very little depth. The fractured relationship she has with her sisters doesn’t really go anywhere.
And the movie hits all the stupid tropes. Characters open doors they clearly should not open. Someone reveals they are gay, as if that is the same as having a character trait. A woman acts like she’s into having sex with a man who has just violently killed her friend, and the bad guy is like “Yeah, makes sense! I think she’s into me!”. Don’t get me wrong: I love watching a rapist get stabbed in the face, or whatever, but these scenes are acted out in this low-energy, rote manner that robs them of any real tension.
I can’t even talk about the ending. When you find out why the men are attacking the women, it is incredibly dumb. Just absolutely completely stupid on multiple levels, not the least of which is that attacking them, given the problem they are trying to solve, is clearly the worst way to go about it. And in the last 10 minutes, the main characters make a decision that is also completely inexplicable. At first I thought I’d missed something in the film, but reading a handful of other reviews reveals that, no, there is just no reason at all for what happens at the end of the film.
My bar for these kinds of films is really low, and yet this one managed to slip below it!
Fear the Night, 2023
Tess (Maggie Q) is an Iraqi war veteran who has a tense relationship with her sister, Beth (Kat Foster). The two come to a truce to attend the bachelorette party of their youngest sister, Rose (Highdee Kuan), but things soon spiral out of control when the house comes under siege from a gang of men. Struggling to stay alive and figure out why they are being attacked, Tess must use her military skills to survive.
Bogged down by meager characterization and a nonsensical plot, this one’s a dud.
Please don’t get me wrong: I will watch a million movies where a group of people is trapped in a house and has to fend off some person or people who intend them harm. The home invasion subgenre is one of my favorites and I tend to be forgiving as long as they are okay.
This movie is not okay. It is much less than okay. This movie is an insulting mix of pandering contemporary cliches and a barely-there plot.
It all starts with a cringeworthy sequence where Tess decides to get into a confrontation with a group of men at a gas station. She calls one of them out for stolen valor and somehow intimidates them into silence. I know that people don’t always make the best choices, but even a tough as nails woman knows that humiliating and provoking a group of men when you are in a vulnerable position (ie outnumbered and accompanied by people who are not hardened military veterans) is a TERRIBLE IDEA. While there are ultimately other factors at play in why the men attack the house, watching Tess needlessly create a hostile situation for herself and the people with her is incredibly alienating.
And from that point the movie is never able to build any compelling momentum. There are maybe a few minutes when the attack first begins, that a room full of terrified women and a single male stripper seems like it could morph into something madcap and delightfully gory, but it does not. The movie gets stuck in a repeating pattern where someone is killed, everyone else screams in terror, and then they move to another room and repeat.
It’s all very frustrating. The cast seems game enough, but they are given precious little to do. Travis Hammer plays Perry, the leader of the bad guys. He is reduced to sneering and growling, and talking in vague ways because the movie wants to hold their motivation as some sort of twist. Maggie Q works fine in the action scenes, but her character has very little depth. The fractured relationship she has with her sisters doesn’t really go anywhere.
And the movie hits all the stupid tropes. Characters open doors they clearly should not open. Someone reveals they are gay, as if that is the same as having a character trait. A woman acts like she’s into having sex with a man who has just violently killed her friend, and the bad guy is like “Yeah, makes sense! I think she’s into me!”. Don’t get me wrong: I love watching a rapist get stabbed in the face, or whatever, but these scenes are acted out in this low-energy, rote manner that robs them of any real tension.
I can’t even talk about the ending. When you find out why the men are attacking the women, it is incredibly dumb. Just absolutely completely stupid on multiple levels, not the least of which is that attacking them, given the problem they are trying to solve, is clearly the worst way to go about it. And in the last 10 minutes, the main characters make a decision that is also completely inexplicable. At first I thought I’d missed something in the film, but reading a handful of other reviews reveals that, no, there is just no reason at all for what happens at the end of the film.
My bar for these kinds of films is really low, and yet this one managed to slip below it!