Fear the Night

If you enjoyed " You're Next" this movie will unfortunately leave a bitter taste in your mouth. I cant say that i disliked the plot of this movie and really had high hopes for it given Maggie Q as the lead. However the acting by the other ladies was lack luster and unbelievable and add this alongside a really poorly written script " voila", you get this . In this day and age who goes anywhere( worse yet in the middle of nowhere) knowing that communication signals are poor/none existent? Not even wifi? Come on! I watched in its entirety purely for Maggie Q and a curiosity ( hope) for at-least a creative ending.

Maggie Q fans will dig it and there's a good movie in here, but you'll have to get through some rough dialogue before this action thriller starts to grab ahold. The title is pretty awful too. It's Assault on Precinct 13, Panic Room and The Purge set at a bachelorette party.

If not for Maggie Q, this movie only gets made by casting some friends for under $50k and winds up being released among the large mulch of movies that remains struggling to find an audience 10 years later. That's how not good the screenplay is. That's how poor some of the editing choices were. But there's still something here worth visiting.

I would love to sit here and gush over how Maggie Q got hosed on this deal and yada yada.. but she helped produce this mess. Maggie Q was fabulous as Nikita back in the day, but I'm starting to feel that ominous sensation when I see new movies she's in. It feels similar to when I see a new flick pop up with Bruce Willis's name on the cover. She's hot and slick, and usually acts pretty well- but everything else about this parade of toxic masculinity was cringy, vapid, and failed to conjure up entertainment value. I gave it a star because.. well, MQ is hot, slick, and still acts pretty well- even if surrounded by empty, single-dimensional cardboard cut-outs. For MQ fans only.

A 6 is too high. Maggie Q is one dimentional here, but I will say she still looks good for 44.

The story is loose and several threads are intrdouced and left to dangle in the wind. The characters are not developed enough to care about any of them.

Also, all men in the movie are pigs or killers. Or that is how they are portrayed.

I watched half and fast forwarded to the end. Just too much dead space that does not advnace the film. Mild thriller. Never gets intense enough to grip you.

It is a very by the numbers girls in cabin with no cell coverage attacked by country good old boys bent on killing them for sport. But medicore script.

I'm a fan of Maggie Q, and I feel bad for her that she had to be part of such a lame excuse for an action-thriller. Barely any of her action skills were utilized effectively. This film lacked a cohesive and engaging narrative, was poorly cast directed, and for that matter, lacked any real and effective directorial skills. The most shocking part of this mess was that experienced filmmaker Neil LaBute with over 30 directing and 35 writing credits under his belt, still hasn't learned a thing about filmmaking. A fifth grade drama class can write and direct a better film than him.

Every genre cliche that has been done many times before and better, was in this mess, and LaBute still managed to have the worst of them all. The entire story was generic, slow, predictable, riddled with plot and technical issues, and was, simply put; utter nonsense. What's worse, is that as the film progresses, it gets worse and dumber by the minute. As if a group of dangerous criminal invaders wouldn't have at least one gun - at least for intimidation or with a silencer if noise is an issue, and not one flashlight lol. Like I said, a fifth grader can come up with a more realistic story.

The time-stamps he added made things worse, because it showed what very little and unconvincing plot happens in between the large gaps in time, to the point that you will get tired from cringing and eye-rolls. Even the normally comfortable 90 min runtime felt way longer with terrible pacing, lack of any real plot and character development, long dragged out and unnecessary scenes, and if that wasn't torture enough, LaBute throws in this infantile and logic-defying epilogue just to punish and confuse the viewer some more.

Maybe with any other better filmmaker, even some newbs that have given us decent films, this nonsense may have been an adequate watch, but as is, don't waste your time, I did it for you. It's a generous 3/10 from me, for all the ladies that tried their best to fend off the lame hicks, lame story, and lame directing, that they had to endure.