Fear the Night movie review: Baiting the audience with a campy home invasion thriller

Fear the Night movie review: This home-invasion set-up is a lame excuse for a generic action-thriller. Action star Maggie Q ( from ‘Nikita’) has little to do here other than look aware, tense and serious

Film: Fear the Night  (Lionsgate)
Cast: Maggie Q, Highdee Kuan, Kat Foster, Ito Aghayere, Philip Burke
Director: Neil LaBute
Rating: 2/5
Runtime: 92 mins

This home-invasion set-up is a lame excuse for a generic action-thriller. Action star Maggie Q ( from ‘Nikita’) has little to do here other than look aware, tense and serious. 
 
Iraq War veteran Tess (Maggie Q) has a contentious relationship with her sister Beth (Kat Foster) have to put aside their differences for their little sister Rose’s bachelorette. They and their friends, Eight of them altogether, arrive for the party at the empty family country home. But things don’t go as planned. They get invaded by thugs who are out to get their hands on a huge stash of drugs and money hidden in the home they are using for the party. 
 
Might have been an interesting thriller if the writing and direction were more inventive and action-oriented. The creepy bad men don’t have much menace building up in their favor either. Other than some direct and shocking hits with a bow and arrow, there’s not much action to experience here. Everything is done pretty stealthily so there’s no visual kinesis to be had. 
 
This film lacks a cohesive and engaging narrative, the thrills are missing and the action is pretty much sub-standard. The writing is inept, there’s no twist, the lack of tension is galling and the dialogues are pretty lame. It’s also quite predictable and cliche-ridden. The time stamps employed to up the tension only made the narrative look hollow and underwritten. The characters just don’t grow on you. The plotting is so amateurish that even a short runtime of 92 min feels laboured and exacting. The epilogue towards the end makes the experience even more tedious. 

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