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Writer-director Bryan Bertino’s thriller “The Strangers” premiered in 2008, and it has taken 10 years to get this sequel, subtitled “Prey at Night,” on screen. Bertino is a co-writer this time (with Ben Ketai) for director Johannes Roberts (“47 Meters Down”), who starts out this second film rather slowly but eventually takes some advantage of his opportunity here.

The first film had Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman terrorized by masked assailants at an isolated summer home in the country, and Bertino highlighted the randomness of their ordeal. (He has said that he was inspired by coverage of the Manson Family murders.) “The Strangers” was stranded somewhere between the theoretical pretensions of Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” and the lower grade horror clichés.

“The Strangers: Prey at Night” begins with the title “Based on true events,” which invites a derisive chuckle from wised-up horror audiences. We hear a pop song on the soundtrack, and a car with three passengers inside drives up to a trailer. (The song stops on the line, “You know life is cruel,” just so we don’t miss the point.) An older woman goes to see what the noise is outside, and it is made clear she is not long for this world.

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The film then takes pains to set up a family story with characters that we might care about. Angst-filled teenager Kinsey (Bailee Madison) has been behaving badly, and so her parents Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson, “Grey’s Anatomy”) are sending her away to a boarding school, even though they can’t afford it. Kinsey feels that her parents favor her older brother Luke (Lewis Pullman, “Battle of the Sexes”), and so tensions simmer as they all pile into a car to visit relatives.

Roberts indulges in some slow zooms as the family set themselves up in a trailer for the night, and we see the bond between Luke and Kinsey, who wears a Ramones shirt but barely knows how to smoke cigarettes. They discover the word “Hello” written many times in red all over a window in the trailer park, and a girl keeps coming to the door of their own trailer to ask, “Is Tamara here?” Once Luke and Kinsey discover the dead bodies of the older couple from the first scene — which turn out to be the remains of the relatives they were visiting — things escalate predictably as the family are all assailed by masked slashers.

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“The Strangers: Prey at Night” is the sort of modern horror movie that shows us a shot of smashed cell phones as a kind of ultimate violation. The family is menaced unexcitingly until Roberts decides to make this movie into 1980s Power Ballad Horror. Luke has defended his sister but has been unable to bring himself to use a gun. Suddenly he stumbles into a pool area, and a bunch of electric lights shaped like trees get switched on. The old Bonnie Tyler hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” starts to play on the soundtrack, and Luke stands up for himself against a man in a mask, who comes swinging at him with an axe.

Roberts builds this sequence so that it feels almost De Palma-esque, or at least skirting that stylized territory. The way that Luke and the slasher fall into the pool and do battle there while “Total Eclipse of the Heart” keeps playing as background has a kind of tension and dynamism that is sorely lacking in the humdrum nighttime trailer-park scenes that have preceded it.

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Roberts keeps this Power Ballad Horror thing going when Kinsey finds herself chased by the same slasher while “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” plays on the soundtrack. At one point, as the danger to Kinsey seems to reach an end, Roberts has that pop song from Air Supply start to distort slightly, a good idea that he milks for all it is worth.

“The Strangers: Prey at Night” is a lean 85 minutes, but the last third with these pop-song-horror set pieces plays so much better than the first half that it suggests that Roberts should have abandoned all caution and really gone for a more consistently over-the-top film based in the emotion that he clearly wants to foster. As it is, this is only half a good horror movie.

Pennywise, Joker and Wrinkles: 12 Best Scary Clowns in Movies and TV (Photos)

Between "It" and "Joker," Warner Bros. is turning Hot Girl Summer into Evil Clown Fall. What was once a symbol of silly circus fun has been turned into one of the most ubiquitous images in horror. So if you're in the mood for a circus from hell, there's plenty of evil clowns to choose from.
"Poltergeist" (1982) --

One of the most famous frights from this messed-up classic is the clown doll. The camera keeps showing it, so you know it's going to attack soon... and even with the warning it still manages to shock everyone.
"Killer Klowns From Outer Space" (1988) --

This movie is... indescribable. It's not scary in the truest sense. It's just macabre and deliberately so-bad-its-good, and it features a final boss monster called Jojo The Klownzilla. It's one of the most famous cult movies ever made, and a sequel had been planned by 20th Century Fox...until Disney killed it after acquiring the studio in March 2019.
Pennywise, "IT" (1990) --

We have to start with the most famous evil clown ever from the original 1990 movie based on Stephen King's story. For some, Tim Curry's portrayal of a killer clown that only kids from Maine can see is the height of creepiness. For others, Curry's "Rocky Horror" levels of camp make Pennywise more amusing than frightening. In both instances, Tim Curry commands attention.
Krusty Doll, "The Simpsons" (1992) --

This killer clown is low on the horror scale but high on the laughs. In one of the most famous "Treehouse of Horror" sequences, "Clown Without Pity," Homer buys Bart a Krusty the Klown doll that tries to kill him. The store where Homer gets the doll and the resolution to the plot are some of the most famous gags "The Simpsons" have ever produced.
Fox
Sweet Tooth, "Twisted Metal" (1995) --

There's nothing funny about this clown. Needles Kane, a.k.a. Sweet Tooth, is a serial killer cursed to feel the pain of having his scalp engulfed in unquenchable flames. Toothie and his ice cream truck have become the icons of the "Twisted Metal" video game series, particularly after he was given his current, nightmarish design in the 2001 PS2 game "Twisted Metal Black."
Sony
"Killjoy" (2000) --

This film and clown have a special place in the cult horror pantheon. The "Killjoy" series is one of the most infamously panned franchises in the genre. It currently has a 2.5/10 rating on IMDB. Yet it has become a must-watch for masochists looking to plow their way through the most infamous bad movies of all time.
Capt. Spaulding, "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003) --

The most memorable character in Rob Zombie's critically panned but secretly beloved cult slasher flick. Played by the late Sid Haig, Spaulding sports gross makeup and disgusting teeth as he leads the movie's protagonists to their doom. In the sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," he eventually abandons the clown schtick and becomes even more evil.
Twisty, "American Horror Story: Freak Show" (2015) --

For all the criticisms surrounding season 4 of "AHS," it created a modern day horror icon with this disfigured clown that has come to be the unofficial mascot of the entire series. That Twisty was able to leave a mark in the psyches of "AHS" fans everywhere in a scene filmed in broad daylight is a testament to the show's reliance on actors rather than gimmicks to create its finest moments.
"31" (2016) --

After the reception towards Capt. Spaulding, Rob Zombie decided to make a film focused around killer clowns. Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon, plays the leader of a group of carnival workers forced to play a deadly game where they are the prey of a troupe of evil clowns.
Pennywise (Again), "It" (2017) and "It: Chapter Two" (2019) --

Creepy Clown Mania got even crazier with the return of Pennywise in a new "It" adaptation from Andy Muschietti. Played this time by Bill Skarsgard, the new Pennywise is a vicious, hateful bully who delights in seeing the terrified looks of his victims before he devours them. And that makes his demise at the hands of the Losers Club all the more satisfying.
Joker (2019) --

Your mileage may vary on whether Joaquin Phoenix's take on the most infamous villain in Gotham City is the creepiest of them all, but it's certainly a contender. Perhaps what makes Arthur Fleck the most disturbing is that he is tangibly human, a person left behind by a decaying society to suffer until he becomes its worst nightmare.
Wrinkles the Clown --

Let's conclude with a real-life creepy clown. In 2015, reports surfaced of an anonymous man in Florida who began offering his services to parents of misbehaving children as a decrepit clown named Wrinkles, who would show up and terrify the daylights out of the young'uns. His status as an internet legend became so big that a documentary about his exploits, was released in 2019.

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There’s no clowning around here

Between "It" and "Joker," Warner Bros. is turning Hot Girl Summer into Evil Clown Fall. What was once a symbol of silly circus fun has been turned into one of the most ubiquitous images in horror. So if you're in the mood for a circus from hell, there's plenty of evil clowns to choose from.

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