Fear the Night

I feel bad for Maggie Q. I really like her as an actress, and she should have never been in this movie. Everything about the film is so cringe. To the boring plot, the predictable scenes, the role your eyes "why on earth did you just do that?". Even the action scenes are boring and very few and far apart. The only nice part about the movie was the ending.

Eight girls take a trip out to the family cabin for a bachelorette party. Things go wrong.... Sounds like an interesting thriller right? There's no sex in the movie, very little gore and the blood looks like ketchup... It's so predictable and cliche and pretty much boring. Meggie Q was the only thing about the movie that was good. But one person cant carry an entire movie on their shoulders when everything else is horribly wrong with it.

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.

Trouble Iraq war veteran Tess (Maggie Q) attends the bachelorette party of her younger sister Rose (Highdee Kuan) organized by her older sister Beth (Kat Foster) with whom Tess has a strained relationship. On the night of the party, assailants surround the house and shoot at the group using bows and arrows as Tess using her military training to keep everyone alive and take down the assailants.

Fear the Night is a new home invasion thriller written and directed by Neil LaBute and starring Maggie Q for Quiver distribution and has recently premiered on VOD. Fear the Night doesn't stray far from the template of established home invasion thrillers, but it LaBute does create some pretty interesting characters thanks to his ability to create tense and uncomfortable situations from abrasive characters (such as In the Company of Men and Nurse Betty). The opening 30 minutes of the movie where Maggie Q's Tess deals with the unspoken awkwardness leading up to and during the bachelorette party kind of reminded me of the Karyn Kusama film The Invitation from 2015 in that much like how that film mixed horror tropes with an awkward dinner party setup, Fear the Night does something similar to an effective albeit not as successful degree. Once the action starts Fear the Night more or less follows most of the tricks and trappings of the home invasion setup but does add that little extra something by keeping some of the characters abrasive enough there's that lingering tension left over from before. The movie's also nicely bloody and with its lack of firearms and reliance on improvised or unconventional weaponry, we do get some fun bloody sequences including one scene with a potato peeler that will make many wince and cross their legs.

Fear the Night is the definition of a "solid rental". It's a familiar setup that's given just enough extra something to make it a reasonably breezy sit and has a solid performance from Maggie Q. For a quiet night in of violent fun you can certainly do worse.

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.

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.