‘Fear the Night’ Review: Party Raid

One not often roots for the dangerous guys in a home-invasion shocker, however, as nearly all of the victims in Neil LaBute’s “Fear the Night” are both insufferably silly or gratingly snippy, their survival is maybe not the precedence it should be.

In any occasion, most of them shall be slaughtered earlier than we will inform them aside in a film that seems not a lot written by LaBute as stapled collectively from a pile of threadbare thriller tropes. The plot might match on a pistol barrel (or, on this case, an arrowhead): Eight ladies descend on a distant farmhouse for a bachelorette get together, solely to seek out their stripper-and-sex-toy revelries interrupted by leering louts who favor artisanal over mechanical weaponry. Bloody chaos ensues as the women bemoan their incapability to dash in excessive heels and wrestle to memorize a three-count knock sign that differentiates pal from foe.

“What is happening to us?” one distraught partygoer inquires, echoing my bewilderment. Like her cohort, she’s going to flip hopefully — and, within the case of Mia (Gia Crovatin), longingly — to the one visitor that nobody else appears to love: Tess (a valiant Maggie Q), a super-serious navy veteran and recovering addict. Tess has suffered. Tess has seen issues. Tess will use her very explicit abilities to rally these nitwits or die making an attempt.

Pausing mid-murders to permit for a touching reconciliation and a romantic confession (not the time, Mia!), the back-of-napkin script stumbles ahead. As for LaBute, a as soon as incisive chronicler of male cruelty and ineptitude, his continued dabblings in style are lamentable. Perhaps the kindest factor to do is faux this dud by no means occurred; it definitely labored for the Farrelly brothers’ “Dumb and Dumber To.”

Fear the Night
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and obtainable to lease or purchase on most main platforms.