Mischief Night

I went into this film with zero expectations and was *very* pleasantly surprised. Film is about a teenager, Emily, who becomes blind after being in a car accident that killed her mother. The actress playing Emily, Noell Coet, turns in a very strong performance. I can see her becoming a major star. The movie suggests Emily's blindness is psychosomatic. Anyhow, Emily and her father move into a house, where we see the previous occupants get slaughtered on "Mischief Night". Well, Mischief Night is back, and the miscreant who killed there before is back. Except this time, Emily's dad has left on a date and Emily is alone. The psycho killer enters the house and eventually a taut game of cat and mouse ensues between the killer and this blind girl. The killer is scary and there are some scenes that are very creepy. There are a few things in the film that are not explained (which I won't reveal), but in the end, they don't detract from the film. If you want a good suspenseful movie, check this one out!!

I might be a little out of touch, but I'm pretty sure "Mischief Night" - if that's even a thing - never involved breaking and entering, stealing car keys and cellphones, disabling cars, cutting landlines, and otherwise shoving large knifes into people's throat.

TIPS for blind people:

Never walk around barefoot - especially if you've dropped glass on the floor.

Keep television volume at low to medium so you can still hear your surroundings.

Don't use headphones to listen to music thereby removing one of your few remaining critical senses.

Keep your cellphone on your person AT ALL TIMES.

Keep your lifesaving asthma inhaler on your person AT ALL TIMES.

There's really no reason to ever keep your blinds open.

Don't go running through an open field at full speed - you're blind!

This is yet another movie where EVERYONE walks around - even when responding to emergencies - with a cell phone that's dead or nearly dead.

Poor Emily is told to "Stay here" literally 4 times (I counted) - once by boyfriend Jimmy and 3 times her Dad. And things still went horribly wrong.

Emily, for what it's worth, has the DUMBEST "smart" phone in the world - because APPARENTLY it can't distinguish the words "home" from "cell" from "Dad" from "911" - arguably the most rudimentary words in its audio file.

And when Jimmy and Emily decide they must leave the house IMMEDIATELY to avoid a potential killer, Jimmy decides he wants to walk down memory lane and paw through sentimental photos. Then he decides it's more urgent to look for bandaids than to get out the house to flee the killer.

And, the idea that after your leg is half amputated by a CHAINSAW, you can simply "hobble around" silently thereafter is quite ludicrous.

All these annoyances aside, the movie was still intriguing and somewhat entertaining to watch. The better of these movies of the genre have the blind girl use her blindness to better clever advantage than here. But it was still a decent thriller.

MISCHIEF NIGHT is a pretty lacklustre movie that feels entirely derivative of previous, better films in the genre. There are elements of THE STRANGERS here in the presence of masked villains who say very little and creep around houses, alongside throwbacks to the classic 'blind woman' thrillers like WAIT UNTIL DARK. Another blind woman thriller I saw recently was the Michael Keaton-starring PENTHOUSE NORTH, which is about on par with this one.

After a fairly confused and irrelevant opening sequence, we're introduced to the usual type of premise: there's a young blind woman in a house on her own at night, on "mischief night" of all things, which is when houses get egged and the like (it's sort of a tamer version of THE PURGE). Inevitably the bad guys show up with murder in mind, and there's a lot of tiptoeing back and forth and suspense scenes involving broken glass, poor mobile phone signals, and the like.

Sadly this is the type of film where we've seen it all before, and it doesn't help that the lead character is completely unsympathetic so I had no particular desire to see her make it through the night. The filmmakers try very hard to make this frightening and suspenseful, but if I'm honest I was bored by it all.

I see people criticizing the fact that it looks a lot like The Purge, and I got to say, it's false! Only people that aren't too much into horror could say this, because let's face it, are all haunted houses movies the same?!? And if you wanna find some similarities, trust me, it goes a lot better hand in hand with When a stranger calls, the remake. Same atmosphere, same idea and other things that lookalike.

Anyway, Mischief Night is one bad movie, and it all starts with the scrip. How could they pass this and send it on the big screens? If you wanna talk about all the things you've seen a million times in other horrors, well, all the bad parts are right here. I really think they focused on this, trying to relate to others, and they did, sure, they managed to make another horrible movie. Think about "Prom night" (the remake) and then imagine something worse than that. You get this one!

So, try When a stranger calls, try The purge, Try funny games, even try The Strangers, but NOT, Mischief Night. Don't ruin yours! Cheers!

It's a movie either watch it and like it or don't. Also seems to be lots of use of the word derivative in these reviews, people just discovered it or something?

Further what is it with the endless film critic wannabees posting reviews, I want to see what non overly analytical people think of movies (you know us "normals").

If I want to read boring arty "I work in the profession, can you tell by how I talk about lighting and it being derivative etc" critic reviews then I would (which is why IMDb gives both choices of reviews to read).

Anyway, the film is a bit useless and has been done better before, but if a cheap horror flick is your thing give it a whirl, yes there are worse movies than this!