10 Horror Movie Sequels With ONE Great Scene
3. The Pool Fight - The Strangers: Prey At Night
It truly is baffling that it took Hollywood an entire decade to produce a sequel to box office smash hit The Strangers, and that it turned out as mostly low-effort as this.
The generically-monikered The Strangers: Prey at Night is stylish and well-acted but largely inert as horrors go, save for one unforgettable end-film set-piece in which Luke (Lewis Pullman) finds himself facing the Strangers by the motel pool.
As Bonnie Tyler's immortal "Total Eclipse of the Heart" blares out over the PA system, Luke kills one of the Strangers and finds himself facing their axe-wielding cohort.
During the fight, they both fall into the pool, and just as Luke almost escapes to dry land, the hulking Stranger stabs him in the side, leaving him to either drown or bleed out in the pool. Thankfully, though, he's saved by his sister Kinsey (Bailee Madison).
This scene is so damn great that it feels like it belongs in a whole other movie - the neon lights, the amusingly ironic use of a pop classic, and the genuine suspense at watching Luke desperately fight for his life.
It invests the audience like no other scene in the film, and provides some faint hope that director Johannes Roberts might muster some of that stylish filmmaking nous for his upcoming Resident Evil reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City.